Pain Is a Prediction – Here's the Neuroscience

I feel like on this episode, I think it's worth recognizing as well that, you know, we are not at all experts in this field at all.

Like we are, you know, actual neuroscientists who know generally quite a lot about the brain and processes, but like not specific in this area.

So in terms of the conversation around kind of But this is also the point of the research is to understand a bit more about it, because also in the whole area of science and academia and neuroscience research more generally, this is not an area we've done loads and loads and loads and loads of research into.

And the whole point of the study that you were taking part in is because of the fact it's like we're trying to break this new ground to understand it a bit more.

So just take kind of.

the just know that going into the rest of the discussion audience member that like this is not at all we're not doctors we're not able to prescribe people stuff and solutions for chronic pain and stuff like that and we're not even talking about solutions but what i'm really interested in is using this study and way of talking about it as a way of understanding further understanding our brains in ourselves and then how we can apply that to our lives so what i mean by that is i'll break it down like this what you were talking about in that kind of way that your brain someone who's in chronic pain kind of just gets used to that pain with a concept we talk about all the time of neuroplasticity.

That is also a neuroplasticity type of process, right? The word for it is like habituating.

Your brain kind of habituates to expecting and experiencing pain.

And obviously that's a horrible experience and it's not a nice thing to be in.

It's not a space I'm in, but that's one of the When we talk about neuroplasticity, we often talk about it as a really positive thing and the idea that you can rewire your brain depending on what you do with it.

And it's really optimistic and hopeful because you can challenge horrible views about yourself.

You can push yourself mentally and learn new things, all that stuff.

But also it can mean that your brain habituates to pain chronically and then you are constantly experiencing that pain.

Obviously, that's a brutal and awful experience.

But I also think it underlines another fundamental truth of neuroscience that we just talk about all the time.

Which is the idea that your body and brain aren't separate.

You know, you're talking about inflammation in an injury, but like, so there's a thing in the brain called the blood-brain barrier, which is obviously, it's in the name, it's the barrier between the brain and blood, right? And inflammation can't like cross that barrier, but inflammatory markers do cross that barrier.

And this is why, for example, when you're unwell, when you're sick and you're not even physically injured, right? you exhibit sickness behaviors.

And we discussed this quite a long time ago now with Hannah Warner-Swan about kind of illness and sickness behaviors and how they manifest in our bodies and brains as well.

And I just think it's another way of talking about the fact that your body and brain are one being if it makes sense and then the kind of projection of your mind from that the experience of your consciousness your kind of perception of the world is fundamentally affected by both of those two things together if you're injured in a very real way that is affecting your state of mind constantly those inflammatory markers might be crossing over into your brain affecting your thought patterns in ways that you possibly can't perceive and i just think it's another way of Really kind of underlining that point of there's no separation between the body and the brain.

It's all one thing.

Yeah, I think that's important to highlight is that, I mean, like as Adam said before, I'm not an expert on this.

This is just what I've learned from doing this four, five months long project.

Um, but yeah, I mean, it's so, I mean, one of the biggest things I've learned is just how connected everything in your body is.

I mean, specifically in this study, we wanted to look at quite a few different things, um, But yeah, I mean, even when we've been looking at this project on chronic pain, there's so much that can happen with your pain system and your immune system and your stress system and everything is sort of all one big mush.