I felt some pains last night as I watched tv last night, while being under the weather with some sort of virus. I am talking an excruciating intermittant pain in my finger. Sort of gout-like.
This got me thinking; how on earth is it that our electrical processing center...our brain...can actually not just send some electrical signal but actually cause that pain sensation that can be excruciating? Exactly *what* is making that pain?
Think about it.
We are not simply receiving some sort of weak electrical impulse that causes us to notice some hum sound or sensation. No. This pain thing can cause us to writhe around on the ground like a snake...scream...maybe get the hives...maybe pass out.
It's pretty odd if you think about it.
I know. I know. I can hear you already: "What's so odd about it Iamme? It sounds lame." LOL .Ya.
Okay...we know that information sent from the brain somehow gets our muscles to contract, which allow us movement of our muscles which attached to our bones, allow us to move.
But what is there different about the injury impulses that cause us not to just *notice* something, but to actually feel the feeling of the complete force, or cut, or whatever injury was inflicted upon us, in the horrible manner we feel it?
It's easy to simply say that there is this sensitivity. Right now, I took my fingernail and scraped it across the backside of my other hand. I felt *something*. But not real pain. But if I went and say severed the nerve that I just scraped, with a knife? Wow. Extreme pain. Why? If an electrical wire on a telephone pole gets severed, I doubt that the transformer from which it came, starts screaming in pain.
Here's something else that's not exactly what I'm talking about, but still interesting: Our brain tells us what spot we are touching on or skin. We do not feel the senstion in our head. We feel the sensation at the site we just touched. That means that our brain has every spot on and in our body wired in the brain to tell us the exact spot of origin so that it can make us 'sense' that that is the spot we are feeling it at, rather than feeling it in our head. Now that that is said, consider what kind of miniaturized network there must be in the brain that can arrange every spot of every micrometer of our body, so that our brain knows to what spot that feeling belongs. The skin surface area of the outside of our bodies (I'm not even talking about feelings *inside* our body) is A HUGE SURFACE AREA. Yet, our relatively little brains are able to process every spot on our body. That's quite remarkeable.
For the fun of it, move your finger quickly around your hand and up and down your arm. Your brain processes this to let you know 'instantly' where the source of your rub is coming from. Quite amazing.
This got me thinking; how on earth is it that our electrical processing center...our brain...can actually not just send some electrical signal but actually cause that pain sensation that can be excruciating? Exactly *what* is making that pain?
Think about it.
We are not simply receiving some sort of weak electrical impulse that causes us to notice some hum sound or sensation. No. This pain thing can cause us to writhe around on the ground like a snake...scream...maybe get the hives...maybe pass out.
It's pretty odd if you think about it.
I know. I know. I can hear you already: "What's so odd about it Iamme? It sounds lame." LOL .Ya.
Okay...we know that information sent from the brain somehow gets our muscles to contract, which allow us movement of our muscles which attached to our bones, allow us to move.
But what is there different about the injury impulses that cause us not to just *notice* something, but to actually feel the feeling of the complete force, or cut, or whatever injury was inflicted upon us, in the horrible manner we feel it?
It's easy to simply say that there is this sensitivity. Right now, I took my fingernail and scraped it across the backside of my other hand. I felt *something*. But not real pain. But if I went and say severed the nerve that I just scraped, with a knife? Wow. Extreme pain. Why? If an electrical wire on a telephone pole gets severed, I doubt that the transformer from which it came, starts screaming in pain.
Here's something else that's not exactly what I'm talking about, but still interesting: Our brain tells us what spot we are touching on or skin. We do not feel the senstion in our head. We feel the sensation at the site we just touched. That means that our brain has every spot on and in our body wired in the brain to tell us the exact spot of origin so that it can make us 'sense' that that is the spot we are feeling it at, rather than feeling it in our head. Now that that is said, consider what kind of miniaturized network there must be in the brain that can arrange every spot of every micrometer of our body, so that our brain knows to what spot that feeling belongs. The skin surface area of the outside of our bodies (I'm not even talking about feelings *inside* our body) is A HUGE SURFACE AREA. Yet, our relatively little brains are able to process every spot on our body. That's quite remarkeable.
For the fun of it, move your finger quickly around your hand and up and down your arm. Your brain processes this to let you know 'instantly' where the source of your rub is coming from. Quite amazing.
