IS PAIN ALL IN YOUR HEAD?
PAIN PATHS
The pain from a wound changes from one moment to the next
If we injure a hand, we feel acute pain a fraction of a second later, but over time the pain changes as other pain receptors are activated.
Thick nerves send faster signals
Pain and sensory nerves stretch from the spinal cord into the skin. The thickness of these nerves determines how quickly the signals from a wound reach the brain.
PAIN DEVELOPMENT
The war veteran is lying down with his head inside a tunnel-shaped tube – a scanner in which powerful magnets are producing a near-deafening racket as they encircle the patient. But it’s not the noise that makes him grind his teeth in pain. On a mission two years previously the young man was shot in his thigh, and he has been tormented by chronic pain ever since. The doctors have been able to do very little to soothe the pain, and have moved their attention from his leg to his brain. The scanner gives them an accurate indication of where in the brain the pain is experienced.
This soldier is a hypothetical example, but such treatment could become reality for pain patients in only a few years. Psychologist Tor Wager from the University of Colorado has discovered that the brain’s handling of pain is far more complex than scientists used to think. By scanning hundreds of pain patients, he has identified and mapped three different pain circuits in
