Pain Perception Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Pain Perception - Article Example ( MedicineNet.com) The physical pain is due to stimulation of nerves. Price also comes to that point later in this article. In fact he tries to explain the intricacies of brain and the nervous system in relaying the feeling of pain. He calls it a serial interaction. But according to him, the feeling or sensation of pain is the foremost factor. He says that this sensation is 'more intense than other type of somatic sensations'. He gives certain characteristics of pain as - slow adaptation, temporal summation, spatial spread, spatial summation and unique sensory qualities. This can be understood by the different words used to describe pain like burning sensation or stinging or aching. He reiterates pain as a neural and psychological process. Then he proceeds to explain the intricacies of both these processes. The effect of pain gets contributions from other sensory processes that may be nociceptive, exteroceptive and interoceptive. He says that there are many ascending pathways to several brainstem and cortical regions. Some of them project directly to brainstem and limbic system arenas from the spinal cord dorsal horn. Individual neurons many times project in multiple pathways. These pathways relay nociceptive information to somatosensory cortices. Since the cortices are physically linked with cortico-limbic pathway, it is connected to other somatosensory input like seeing and hearing. This pathway converges with the same structure that is accessed by ascending spinal pathways. Due to this dual convergence, multiple neural sources can contribute to pain perception. According to Cass Barnes, pain is a matter of both mind and body. There is a controversy on this point on how much is it dependent on the mind and how much on brain. Brain forms the physical or the 'body' part of pain where as mind forms the psychological part of pain. The International Association for the Study of Pain defines pain as 'an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience'. This definition makes pain like any other perception like sight or hearing. Cass explains that pain is processed in the brain and creates the perception of pain. This is in accordance with Price who also explains the processing of pain in the brain in great details. Cass cites a study done in 1997 where perception of pain was measured by PET scan. Pain was induced in the subjects by putting their hands in ice cold water. The same was done where the subjects were hypnotized. PET scan results showed less pain in hypnotized state. The somatosensory cortex was highly activated in the hypnotized subjects that show perception of pain but the anterior cingulated cortex were less active in hypnotized subjects, showing less aversion to pain. Price also confirms that pain sensation and pain unpleasantness are two different things and the intensity is affected by various psychological factors. He also cites the example of comparative perception of pain when the subjects are hypnotized. He comes to the conclusion that some psychological factors have selective influence on pain unpleasantness and some of them can alter pain unpleasantness as there is a ch ange in the pain sensation. Thus the psychological factors have a very important role in pain and pain perception. Then he explains the secondary pain affect. It has a more projected implication that is related to its future implications. The relation between pain unpleasantne