Question: what interests you most about pain?

Alexandra Quigley answered on 4 Mar 2019:

People feel pain in their bodies, and so they think that pain starts in the body and is ‘transmitted’ to the brain, which ‘registers’ the pain. This isn’t how it works. A ‘change’ is registered in the cells and receptors in a particular body area. Messages are sent to the brain about that change. At this point, there is no pain. The brain registers this message, and thousands of other messages, and processes them at superquick speed. So many different things can influence pain, not just what is happening in the body. Messages about what we can see, hear, smell, taste, remember, predict etc are all influential. The brain generates the experience of pain based on MANY different inputs. Pain is a protective ‘response’, not an input. If we can influence the inputs, we can influence the pain response.