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“Moskowitz defined chronic pain as “learned pain.” Chronic pain not only indicates illness; it is itself an illness. The body’s alarm system is stuck in the “on” position, because the person has been unable to remedy the cause of an acute pain, and the central nervous system has become damaged.”
― The Brain's Way of Healing: Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries from the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity
― The Brain's Way of Healing: Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries from the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity
“As he analyzed the areas that fire in chronic pain, he observed that many of those areas also process thoughts, sensations, images, memories, movements, emotions, and beliefs—when they are not processing pain. That observation explained why, when we are in pain, we can’t concentrate or think well; why we have sensory problems and often can’t tolerate certain sounds or light; why we can’t move more gracefully; and why we can’t control our emotions very well and become irritable and have emotional outbursts. The areas that regulate these activities have been hijacked to process the pain signal.”
― The Brain's Way of Healing: Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries from the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity
― The Brain's Way of Healing: Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries from the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity
“To actually make you believe that your problems were spiritual and mental but absolutely not boozical. Good Christ, just the alcohol-related loss of the REM sleep was enough to screw you up righteously, but somehow you never thought of that while you were active. Booze turned your thought-processes into something akin to that circus routine where all the clowns come piling out of the little car.”
― Wolves of the Calla
― Wolves of the Calla
“For example, students of policy have noted that the availability heuristic helps explain why some issues are highly salient in the public’s mind while others are neglected. People tend to assess the relative importance of issues by the ease with which they are retrieved from memory—and this is largely determined by the extent of coverage in the media.”
― Thinking, Fast and Slow
― Thinking, Fast and Slow
“Wall and Melzack showed how a chronic injury not only makes the cells in the pain system fire more easily but can also cause our pain maps to enlarge their “receptive field” (the area of the body’s surface that they map for), so that we begin to feel pain over a larger area of our body’s surface. This was happening to Moskowitz, whose neck pain was spreading to both sides of his neck. Wall and Melzack also showed that as maps enlarge, pain signals in one map can “spill” into adjacent pain maps. Then we may develop referred pain, when we are hurt in one body part but feel the pain in another, some distance away.”
― The Brain's Way of Healing: Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries from the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity
― The Brain's Way of Healing: Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries from the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity
Heather E Cutler’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Heather E Cutler’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
34 books
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29 friends
19 books
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52 friends
14 books
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16 friends
3 books
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3 friends
14 books
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37 friends
0 books
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36 friends
1 book
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162 friends
483 books
|
98 friends
More friends…
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