What goes on in the brain matters

I am the first to say (quite loudly at times) that pain is a whole person experience. I say this because my experience of pain is mine and utterly unable to be shared in all its complexity. The only way other people know about my pain is through my actions – both involuntary and voluntary. And even then: the way I express myself differs depending on my social context, my mood, my goals, and what I think my pain represents. Yet when I’m asleep, I don’t have pain, when I have anaesthetic for my colonoscopy, I don’t have pain – so what goes on in my brain is kinda important. Now there have been a couple of really intriguing studies on brain networks recently. One is the paper by Gordon and a team of researchers (Gordon et al., 2023) challenging the received view of the homunculus, or mapping of motor (and sensory) areas in the cortex. These researchers offer instead a representation of zones of function, interspersed with regions that seem to work as connector areas, enabling a ‘somato-cognitive action network for integrative, allostatic whole-body control.’ Why might this be important? Well because the ‘somato-cognitive action system’ (SCAN) seems to explain how we can both undertake highly specialised movements (such as moving the tongue for speech, manipulating objects with the fingers) and whole body coordination in an integrated way to anticipate and plan for actions we intend to take. The SCAN is connected to importa...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - Category: Anesthesiology Authors: Tags: Chronic pain Pain conditions Research Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs