explain
pain
section
4
page
76
The brain adapts and tries to help
Smudging the neurotag
L
et’smove up to the brain. These changes in the spinal
cordwill lead to changes in the brain. The same changes
which occur in the spinal cordwith persistent pain also
occur in pain ignition nodes in the brain. Not only does the
brain have to process and adapt to all the information
about the threat, the brain itself starts to change. Don’t
panic! Our brains are changing all the time, this is a change
aimed at lifting sensitivity, in order to protect us.
8,52
Themain changes that occur in the brain are the
manufacture of more sensors in the pain ignition nodes
(remember the neurotag – page 38,39) and of more
chemicals in the body to activate the sensors. Thismeans it
is easier to ignite for example, amemory area. If you had a
nasty accident on a street corner, every time you pass that
area youmay have a reminder, perhaps just a shudder, or
maybe even a pain neurotag is constructed in your brain.
Your brain is looking out for you. Hopefully you are
starting to see how sophisticated this protectivemechanism
can be.
Another change which is known to occur in the outer
brain, the cortex, is ‘smudging’ – brain areas normally
devoted to different body parts or different functions, start
to overlap. In fact, the longer pain persists, themore
advanced the changes in the brain become.
52,53,122,123
We
think both types of changemight be strategies by which the
brain ‘looks out’ for you – bymaking the body part difficult
to use (smudging of motor areas in the brain, thus limiting
movement), or bymaking nearby body parts sensitive too
(smudging of sensory areas in the brain).
But don’t panic! Reflect on the homunculus again (pages 56
and 57) – it is always changing anyway. So if you kept
stroking an index finger, the area of the brain involved in
sensing the index finger would start to enlarge. In this way,
the brain reflects the history of inputs. Braille users have
larger virtual index fingers – they shrink over a weekend if
they don’t use Braille.
124
Musicians with painful non-
functional handsmay have distortion of the virtual hand in
the brain.
125
However, recent developments show that
smudging associatedwith persistent pain can be reversed
with training.
127-129
To be clear – smudging sounds serious. The good news is
that it is reversible. In the same way that muscles and
joints can bemademore healthy and robust, so too can the
homuncular arrangements in your brain.
