I-Function, Pain And Memory
Pain is capable of leaving a long lasting effect on ones life and in ones memory. It can literally "change" who "you" are. "You" change according to the input that your nervous system receives and reacts to. Permanent changes can be seen in long-term memories with the manufacturing of new proteins stored in the memory that account for the inputs. Pain can be an extremely powerful input to the nervous system with varying effects that could lay dormant for many years, stored in long-term memory. Several questions that could be posed concerning pain and long term memory involve the I-function. Can the I-function be turned off during a painful experience, but still be stored in long-term memory, able to be recalled later such as under hypnosis? Could pain cause a separation of the I-function from the physical self or a loss of ones sense of self? Many examples of pain can be quickly imagined and recalled from long or short-term memory. Certain types of pain reside deep inside the stored memory in the brain and require a special state of consciousness to bring out those memories. Pain memories associated with various actions such as rape and circumcision have been found to exist in long term memory. These painful experiences at different stages in life are separate in the way that they are remembered and recalled, but both involve feelings later of a physical violation and mental trauma due to the lack of consent.
Circumcision, the removal of the foreskin over the penis, was long thought to be a painless experience for an infant and was treated accordingly with little or no anesthesia. Most of the times during the surgical procedure, the babies cry very forcefully. This was for a long time thought to be normal and healthy. Other times, they lie still without making a sound from either shock or the act of passing out from the pain (1). This unresponsiveness was always thought to be from undeveloped pain receptors, or Nociceptors in the Somatosensory system (2) . These pain receptors send information to the spinal cord, then to the brain stem, thalamus, and somatosensory cortex. Modulation can occur through these pathways by way of suppression using large mechanosensitive fibers that enter the spinal cord or by endorphine release. This modulation involves changing the information about the pain to lessen the perception of its magnitude.
It has been shown that intrathecal administriton of GABA receptor antagonists cause hyperalgesia and allodynia. Constitutive, the increase in the endogenous GABA activity in the spinal cord alleviate pain resulting from noxious and innoxious mechanical and thermal stimuli. Different GABA receptors have different roles in alleviating thermal and mechanical pain in different animal pain models. There is no study to date that has examined the involvement of GABA A and GABA B in sensory dimension of neuropathic pain resulting from compression of spinal cord. The current study tests the hypothesis that GABA A or GABA B receptors contributes to the allodynia and hyperalgesia observed after spinal cord injury. The results showed that the effect of GABA A and GABA B receptors on mechanical hyperalgesia is similar but these receptors have different effects on thermal hyperalgesia. While using baclofen as GABA B receptor agonist does not affect the thermal pain, thermal hyperalgesia resulting from spinal cord injury was greatly alleviated by different doses of GABA A agonist, muscimol. Both Baclofen and muscimol are able to reduce the mechanical and cold allodynia has been seen after spinal cord injury but the effect of baclofen is dose dependent with no effect in higher doses used in this study. While almost all doses of muscimol were used in this study reduce the amount of cold and mechanical allodynia. The other result obtained in this study is the short term effect of GABA agonist. The anitinociceptive effect of Baclofen and muscimol appear to be maxium at 15 min after injection and gradually diminished by time and their analgesic effect disappeared 3 hours after injection.
The Support of Research of that Privation in Infancy will Have Adverse Effects on Later Development
The most common and well described pain transmission is “gate control theory of pain”. This theory was first proposed by Melzack and Wall in 1965 whereby they used the analogy of gate to explain the inhibition of pain which exists within the dorsal horn of the spinal cord. For instance, when tissue damage occurs, substances such as prostaglandin, serotonin, histamine and bradykinin are released from the injured cell. Individual usually consume or apply pain medications such as NSAIDs whereby these medications will cause electrical nerve impulse at the end of the sensory nerve fiber via nociceptor. Nociceptor is a pain receptor that is commonly found in the skin, cornea of eye and organ of motion such as muscles and ligaments. These nerve impulses
What exactly is pain? According to Webster's dictionary, pain is "physical suffering typically from injury or illness; a distressing sensation in a part of the body; severe mental or emotional distress". Most everyone reading this paper has experienced some form of physical pain at some point during their lives; most everyone has even experienced the common daily pains such as stubbing our toe as we walk through the living room, accidentally biting our tongue as we chew, and having the afternoon headache after a long day of work. No matter the fact that it is unpleasant, pain has a very important role in telling the body that something is not right and leading to behavior that will remove the body from a source of potential injury. Imagine if we could not experience pain. We would not be able to change our behavior in any way when touching the burning hot dish in the oven, resulting in potentially serious burns. We could not recognize that perhaps we twisted an ankle when walking down the stairs, thus continued walking on that foot would exacerbate the injury to the point of not being able to walk at all. Indeed, pain is not pleasant, but in many cases it is an important way for our nervous system to learn from and react to the environment.
"Chronic pain persists despite the fact that the fact the injury has healed. Pain signals remain active in the nervous system for the prolonged or infinite amount of time. Physical effects include tense muscles, limited mobility, lack of energy, and changes in the appetite. Emotional effects include depression, anger, anxiety, and fear of re-injury"(Cleveland Clinic 2013). Chronic pain can develop from multiple common conditions. These can include; instance migraines, diabetes, IBS, fibroids, and endometri...
George Washington Carver was a famous American botanist and inventor. The date of his birth is unknown, but he was born into slavery in Diamond, Missouri. He died on January 5th, 1943 in Tuskegee, Alabama. He went to Iowa State University through 1994-1996. Having an art teacher see his talent for painting flowers and plants inspired him to study botany at Iowa State Agricultural College. There he earned a bachelor’s degree in agricultural science in 1894 and a Master of Science degree in 1896. Carver was the first African American student to graduate and was appointed to the Iowa state faculty as an assistant botanist for the Experiment Station in 1896. Carver worked out over 100 products using one major crop which was the peanut including
According to Rocker- Gladen, while attempting to teach her students about consumerism, one recurring comment students normally make about consumerism, it is their parents’ responsibility to monitor their exposure to consumerism. This alarming fact is that not every child has parents whom are actively involved in their child’s development. Turkle emphasized that by parents giving their kids cell phones this can lead them to developing a new state of dependence. Instead of the youth seeking their parent’s advice about their ideas and attitudes, they are more likely resort to their inexperienced peers. This is as a result of the “always on, always contented” communication culture that is being the...
Circumcision is a painful operation that newborns in the United States experience. Anesthetics are not used on these patients since they are at such a young age, as a consequence the infant is awake throughout the procedure. Some infants
Acetaminophen serves one basic purpose, to relieve pain. It is the main ingredient in pain killers that relieve headaches. It also substitutes anesthesia in circumcision surgery because anesthesia often cannot be used on infants. Dr. Michael Weitzman and 2 other doctors performed an experiment on an infant to test the effectiveness of the drug. The results were not identical, but there were increases in heart rate respiratory rate and crying. But the drug did more good as a pain reliever after the surgery than before the surgery.
Amnesia affects the memory. People diagnosed with amnesia lose memories that occur before the onset of amnesia. Amnesia affects the memory, how well you can store long term memory. If amnesia occurs, one might have trouble with long term memory in the future, or simply forget most of their past. Due to the brains plasticity, the brain can use association areas to help build memory. Amnesia commonly comes in two forms that occur together: Retrograde amnesia and Anterograde amnesia.
I think few things would be scarier than having aspects of your cognitive functioning decay over time, knowing that the process is most likely going to progress. As someone who experiences moderate memory problems due to Fibromyalgia, I identify in some ways with the memory loss, attention problems, and in some ways executive functioning symptoms. However, I do not experience or need to fear forgetting my loved ones, losing my independence, nor is it affecting my motor abilities.
Consumerism is the idea that influences people to purchase items in great amounts. Consumerism makes trying to live the life of a “perfect American” rather difficult. It interferes with society by replacing the normal necessities for life with the desire for things with not much concern for the true value of the desired object. Children are always easily influenced by what they watch on television. Swimme suggests in his work “How Do Kids Get So Caught Up in Consumerism” that although an advertiser’s objective is to make money, the younger generation is being manipulated when seeing these advertisements. Before getting a good understanding of a religion, a child will have seen and absorbed at least 30,000 advertisements. The amount of time teenagers spend in high school is lesser than the amount of advertisement that they have seen (155). The huge amount of advertisements exposed to the younger generation is becomi...
Readers generally characterize the Puritan Townspeople in The Scarlet Letter by their attitudes in the beginning of the novel. When Hester first walks into the scene, most of the townspeople are very harsh and strict in their religions. They believe that adultery is one of the worst sins possible. One unyielding woman says, “This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die. Is there not law for it? Truly, there is, both in the Scripture and in the statutebook. Then let the magistrates, who have made it of no effect, thank themselves if their own wives and daughters go astray.'; Although a young woman and a righteous man try to intervene with the angry old women, their voices are never heard. Also, Hawthorne associates ugliness with wickedness; therefore, all of the stingy women are described as being very ugly. They regard her not as a fellow sinner but as a woman so evil that she must be ostracized from her “perfect'; community. They view the scarlet letter that she wears upon her breast as a symbol of her atrocious crime of adultery and nothing more. The women in the beginning of the novel are so quick to pass judgment on others, yet they fail to recognize the sin in themselves. Once they realize this obstacle, the townspeople will become more understanding of Hester’s situation.
For an attempt to purify a religious community of sin, the Puritans in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, have numerous faults due to their blindness of their own hypocrisy. Starting at the beginning of the text, women begin gossiping about Hester. The women talk about how Hester will cover her letter, how they wouldn’t take mercy on her as the magistrates have and how Reverend Dimmesdale,”her godly pastor, takes it very grievously to heart that such a scandal should have come upon his congregation” (Hawthorne 53). So because they also enjoy elaborate things, the children and virgin women do very un-Puritan like things, and how Dimmesdale himself is a hypocrite all show hypocrisy within the Puritan Society; however, children learn by how their parents act and what they do, so the Puritans within the text are following their
To most the detective fiction genre is considered to be “new.” Marking its inception with Edgar Allan Poe’s short story The Murders in the Rue Morgue in 1841, classifying Poe as the “undisputed father” of crime fiction (Butler). However, Poe is not the creator of the detective fiction genre, and in fact this type of literature can be seen centuries before in Old Testament writings. These writings include “Susanna and the Elders” and “Bel and the Priests,” as well as Greek writings like “Hercules and Cacus” and “King Rhampsinitus and The Thief”(Scaggs 19). Together, these literary pieces have had an ever-lasting influence on crime fiction, and substantiate the fact that Poe was in no way the originator of this genre.