2. Pain Flashcards
How does pain arise?
By a physical disturbance in the body, but also psychological issues.
Definition of the ‘mind’?
The mind is all the information-processing carried out by the brain.
Why do you think statistics on the extent of pain are very difficult to collect, even in countries with well-organised disease registries?
- Pain is a subjective experience; there is no objective test of whether someone is (or is not) in pain, or ways of measuring objectively ‘how much’ pain they are in.
- Pain might be intense but resolve swiftly (e.g. the pain of a cut finger), or persist for years (e.g. joint pain in arthritis), or ‘come and go’ (as in migraine headaches). It is difficult for data on pain to reflect such variations.
- Pain is associated with different diseases, disabilities and injuries; statistics may be collected on these conditions, rather than on the pain they cause (e.g. blocked arteries supplying the heart cause chest pain, but cases are recorded as angina not as examples of pain).
What is acute pain?
- lasts for only a relatively short time.
- duration of pain usually corresponds roughly to the continued existence of the disturbance to the body
- persuade people to act so as to escape the pain and later to protect the injured part until healing is completed.
- also encourage people to avoid the pain-triggering situation in the future
What is chronic pain?
- last from months to years
- typically lasts long after the initial cause is corrected, e.g. long after the time required for healing following surgery to remove a tumour
- becomes a medical problem in its own right and commonly triggers emotional disturbances such as depression
Such things as cuts and swellings, i.e. localisable triggers to pain involving tissue damage and which arise at the skin or within the body, are termed…
noxious stimuli
The process of detecting physically damaging stimuli by the body is termed…
nociception
Pain triggered by noxious stimuli is sometimes termed…
nociceptive pain
Triggers to pain that arise from psychological causes such as loss and rejection are called…
psychogenic stimuli
Pain triggered by psychogenic stimuli is called…
psychogenic pain
Is psychogenic pain ‘real’ pain?
Yes, as the pain is still simultaneously biological, since it arises in the brain.
What’s the name of the collection of different regions of the brain which exhibits a relatively high activity at times of nociceptively triggered pain?
The pain matrix
What means ‘adaptive value’?
If characteristics have served to increase the survival and reproductive chances of the animal (human or otherwise), such characteristics are said to have ‘adaptive value’.
What is an ‘evolutionary trade-off’?
An aspect of a characteristic that represents an adaptive compromise between two opposing evolutionary pressures;
e.g. the human pelvis represents a compromise between being narrow, which is necessary for running at speed, and being wide, which is necessary for giving birth to a baby with a large head.
What means ‘cognition’?
The term cognition refers to certain kinds of activity with which the brain is engaged, i.e. the processing of information that is summarised by the term ‘mind’.
Such processing is said to involve cognitive processes, e.g. thinking, memory and reasoning (as in interpreting the meaning of a pain).
What means ‘affect’?
The dimension of positive and negative feelings, exemplified by, respectively, happiness and pain.
In psychology, ‘positive affect’ corresponds to happiness and pleasure, whereas ‘negative affect’ corresponds to aversion, e.g. pain, depression and disgust. Between the extremes, there is a gradual change passing through ‘zero affect’, where the experience is neither pleasurable nor aversive.
Does nociceptive pain have an adaptive value?
Viewed in terms of its evolutionary origins, nociceptive pain has adaptive value; it helps to protect the body from damage.
However, not all instances of pain exhibited these days can necessarily be understood in terms of an adaptive function.
Explain the adaptive value of (a) nociceptive pain and (b) psychogenic pain.
(a) Nociceptive pain warns of tissue damage or potential tissue damage. Taking action to reduce it protects the body and thereby aids survival and reproduction chances.
(b) A threat to a social bond is the trigger to psychogenic pain. Such bonds are vital to survival and reproduction in a social group-living species such as humans.
What is physiology?
Physiology is the study of the relationship between structure and function of body systems.
The nervous system is made up from…
the brain, the spinal cord and nerves located throughout the body.
What does the nervous system do?
The nervous system controls behaviour and mental life, as well as coordinating the body’s physiology.
What is the so called ‘lock-and-key interaction’?
The binding that occurs between a signalling molecule and its specific receptor. The specificity of the binding is analogous to that of a particular key in a particular lock; e.g. the binding between a neurotransmitter and its receptor, or a hormone and its receptor.
What is homeostasis?
A property of the body in which a number of its important parameters are held near to constant and any deviation from their normal value triggers action that tends to restore normality. It is exemplified by the maintenance of body temperature, or of oxygen concentration in the bloodstream, etc.
How is homeostasis maintained?
Homeostasis and is maintained by a process termed negative feedback;
e.g. a fall in body temperature is fed back via the nervous system, which triggers shivering and this tends to raise body temperature back to normal.
Where are hormones made?
Hormones are made by specialised cells in what are termed ‘endocrine glands’ at various locations in the body.
From which gland is epinephrine released?
From the suprarenal gland (formerly known as the ‘adrenal gland’)
When is cortisol being released and where does it go?
In response to stress, physical trauma and social loss. Its target is, amongst other sites in the body, neurons of the brain involved with processing emotional information.
What is the CNS?
The central nervous system: brain and spiral chord.
All the nervous system that is not located in the CNS forms the peripheral nervous system.
