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Pain: who needs it, right? All of us have it, but how much do we really understand about what it means to our body, our brain, and our actions. It presents itself as a very unpleasant sensation, but the reality is, pain is necessary for survival. Pain is protection. In fact, people who are born without the ability to feel pain have a reduced life expectancy because they accumulate repeated injuries without knowing it (think about a child who gets burned because they cannot feel the heat on the stove) (NIH, 2020). Pain is a defender of our body, it helps us learn from negative situations and it pushes us into a place of healing (Moseley & Butler, 2017). It is similar to an alarm system, explained well in this video by Adriaan Louw: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO1hg2ya3Js

Our bodies have good protection systems, and pain is only one part of those systems. The brain inputs information from many different areas (tissue health, immune system, emotions, cultural beliefs, just to name a few). It then creates an output to protect the body from what it perceives as a threat, and pain is one of these outputs. Pain is the output we are most aware of and usually causes a behavior change to remove the threat. The intensity of what we feel is based on how much threat the brain perceives the body to be in, not how much danger we are actually in. Therefore, pain is adaptable, responsive, predictive, reflective, and learning based on our inputs.

Another interesting fact about pain is that it very rarely relates to bodily damage. Pain is 100% real, but it is not an accurate representation of the state of the body. It is even possible to have one without the other. For example, have you ever noticed a bruise and not known where it came from? Or what about the difference between a mother who can lift a car off her trapped child while injured herself, versus getting a paper cut that feels like the end of the world? What we feel is all related to our context: beliefs, knowledge, logic, other sensations (sight, smell, sound, etc), anticipated consequences, access to resources, social context; the list is endless.

This is very similar to how vision changes with perception. Consider context in many optical illusions:

https://fixthephoto.com/photo-tips/optical-

I will be writing a monthly post related to neuroscience education, including topics such as how to use a Protectometer, discussing the memory of pain, how words can be a powerful drug, and the opioid epidemic. Stay tuned for next month’s post about changing our thinking from “pain” sensation to “danger” sensation.

1. (2020, April 15). Congenital insensitivity to pain. NIH U.S. National Library of Medicine. https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/congenital-insensitivity-to-pain#statistics
2. Moseley, G. L. & Butler, D. S. (2017) Explain Pain Supercharged. Noigroup Publications.
3. Schmidt, S. (2019). Moving Without Moving [Powerpoint Slides]. Retrieved from Align Conference.
4. Moseley, G. L. (2019). Pain. From Biology to Behaviour Change. [Powerpoint Slides]. Retrieved from lecture in Winchester, VA.

Post written by PRO’s own Sarah Geraghty