Name: 【TED-Ed】How does your brain respond to pain? - Karen D. Davis
Uploaded: 2015-02-14T22:00:00.000Z
Duration: 4 min 58 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

if you received constant electric shocks to your hands?

Because the pain would distract you from the task.

Other people use tasks to distract themselves from pain,

Some people can just send their mind wandering.

be subjected to the exact same painful stimulus

and yet experience the pain so differently?

Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience,

associated with actual or potential tissue damage.

so it's best measured by what you say it is.

you can describe it on a scale from zero, no pain, to ten, the most pain imaginable.

What exactly creates these perceptions of pain?

special tissue damage-sensing nerve cells,

called nociceptors, fire and send signals

to the spinal cord and then up to the brain.

And brain superhighways carry information

The superhighway that carries pain information

a part of the brain that decides what to do

Another system of interconnected brain cells

Since pain can have serious consequences,

to take your hand off a hot stove, for example.

But modulation networks are also activated

chemicals released when you're in pain or during extreme exercise,

These chemical systems help regulate and reduce pain.

All these networks and pathways work together

but the sensitivity and efficacy of these brain circuits

determines how much you feel and cope with pain.

This is why some people have greater pain than others

is not so different than all kinds of variability

Like how some people love roller coasters,

but other people suffer from terrible motion sickness.

Why does it matter that there is variability

Well, there are many treatments for pain,

For mild pain, non-prescription medications

can act on cells where the pain signals start.

Other stronger pain medicines and anesthetics

work by reducing the activity in pain-sensing circuits

or boosting our coping system, or endoprhins.

distraction, relaxation, meditation, yoga,

For some people who suffer from severe chronic pain,

months after their injury should've healed,

Traditionally, medical science has been about

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【TED-Ed】How does your brain respond to pain? - Karen D. Davis

experience

matter

sense

people