Symptoms And Treatment Of Peripheral Nociceptors At High Threshold Triggers Central Pathways

To most people, pain is a nuisance, but to others pain controls their life. The feeling discomforts us in ways that can sometimes seem almost imaginable. These feelings can lead to many different side effects if not dealt with or diagnosed. These effects can include depression, anxiety, and incredible amount of stress. The truth about pain is that it is vital to our existence. Without the nervous system responding to pain, we would have no idea if we were touching a hot stove, being stuck by a porcupine’s needles, or something else that could leave a lasting effect upon our bodies without us even knowing anything about it.

Pain perception can be less than might be expected from the extent of a physical injury. This was proven by a scientist called Susana Bantick, Oxford University, and colleagues who carried out a study on the influence of attention distracting pain processing (Bantick et al, 2002). During the experiment, brain processing was measured by measuring brain activity using fMRI. Participants rated pain from 1-10 when noxious heat stimulus was applied to their hand in the scanner. She then followed the same process but gave them a task which required cognitive processing; reducing the amount of focused attention on pain. Bantick, therefore, showed attention distraction can reduce the amount of pain perceived by the individual, also pain processing to the brain was reduced. This provides vital evidence that pain perception does not just depend on the injury alone.

Mackey (2015) has argued that pain is subjective symptom and is derivative of several biochemical, psychological, and socioeconomic factors, and different cultural groups experience and expresses pain differentially. Jibb et el (2015) have noted that causes of pain are numerus and they have potential affect pain management differently. Pain can be a symptom of a disease, or it can result from invasive treatment and diagnostic procedures. The prefrontal cortex has neurophysiological pathways that responds to pain signals, thereby regulating emotions, cognitions, memory, and attention (Barrett & Chang, 2016).

The etiology of chronic pain is complex and may be due to a number of different factors. Current therapeutics often fail to produce adequate analgesia for moderate-to-severe pain

Many people suffer from chronic widespread pain within their body. Physical pain can be described as unpleasant sensory experiences provoked by real or perceived tissue damage. The perception of pain and nociception can be induced at pressures and temperatures that are tremendous enough to cause some sort of injury or damage. Pain can also be portrayed as a variety of sensations such as lancinating, stabbing, pricking, burning, throbbing, cramping, and aching. Noxious stimuli are detected by specialized neurons called nociceptors. After repeated incidence of injury, nociceptors can be sensitized leading to allodynia and/or hyperalgesia. Allodynia is the perception of pain from normally harmless stimuli. Hyperalgesia is an increase

Pain’s inability to remember its own origins strongly suggests an extreme span of time since its beginning – pain has lasted a long time

Sean Mackey is a M.D, Ph.D, the current Chief of the Division of Pain Medicine, as well as a Redlich professor in several pain and brain related sciences at Stanford. Doctor Mackey leads the research at the Stanford Systems Neuroscience and Pain Laboratory focusing on the dissecting chronic pain and how it effects the nervous system. The SNAPL has also attempted to map out the brain and regions in the spinal cord that understand pain in order to treat these occurrences of chronic pain on a personal level (Stanford Medicine Bio). In order to solve these problems he is mainly explores the effects of different injected drugs, such as Lidocaine, Ondansetron, and Botulinum Toxin, for ameliorating effects or help in linking how different responders

Pain is defined as, “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience arising from an actual or potential issue damage” (Fink, 2000, p. 236). As of 2016, this is the most current definition of pain because it addresses pain as being subjective, but there is also an understanding that there are biological mechanisms involved that

“Medications, brain surgery, problems in the brain, confusion, and nerve damage from trauma or chronic diseases such as diabetes can change the interpretation of pain without changing awareness of the sensation. For example, persons may feel sensation, but it does not bother them” (Kopec, 2006)

A recent systematic review of Kingston et al. (2014) concluded that spinal JM largely leads to sympatho-excitation as the dominant paradigm of neurophysiological mechanisms underlying pain relief. Kingston el al. (2014) cited only 1 study that utilized the PA

Recent experimental data suggest that basal ganglia may also be involved in various dimensions of pain sensation and pain experience 69. So far, there

Neuropathic pain is a widespread health[1]. It is a complex disorder that leads to chronic illness. Although considerable progress has been made, the mechanisms of neuropathic pain have not been fully elucidated[2]. Accumulating evidence indicates that neuroinflammatory may play a critical role in the initiation and maintenance of neuropathic pain, which is now considered to be a neuroimmune disorder[3-6]. Researches showed that activation of glial cells (microglia and astrocytes) contributes to central nervous system neuroinflammation and promotes central sensitization, as well as subsequent development and maintenance of neuropathic pain[7-9]. In addition, several studies have shown that inhibiting microglial and astrocytic activation have analgesic effects in neuropathy[10-12]. Whereas, currently available drugs are either insufficiently effective, or produce undesirable side effects[6].

The most vital functions of the nervous system is to provide information about the occurrence or threat of injury. One of the ways this is done is in form of pain. However, sometimes, established pain can go beyond its protective role, thus becoming a disease in itself than just being a symptom. This condition is called chronic pain. The injury or the precipitating event can be physical (like in case of phantom limb pain or post-surgical pain), infection (as with post-herpetic neuralgia), systemic disease (like with diabetic neuropathy), drug (chemotherapy induced peripheral neuropathy) or can sometimes be unknown (trigeminal neuralgia, migraine, cluster headache, etc.) Even today, the pathological processes involved in genesis, establishment and continuation of such diseases are poorly understood. Eventually, such painful conditions usually remain refractory to available treatments.

Pain is a personalized individual experience that is subjective and complex. It is, by definition, the result of unpleasant stimuli transmitted by the nervous system to the brain in an effort to alert one that something is wrong within the body (Ignatavicius, 2013). This stimuli can result anywhere from that of a pin-prick of a needle to that of an extensive burn as the result of a house fire. Moreover, pain can be emotional and mental as with that of difficult heartbreak or loss of loved one. All in all, the nature of pain is mystery to many health care professionals as it acts as a protective mechanism towards the body but varies from patient to patient. It is because of this that pain as a whole is “whatever the experiencing person says it is, existing wherever he or she says it does” (Ignatavicius, 2013). Even with its universality, this description of pain rests on the belief that the only person with the authority to describe the pain is the one experiencing it. It is with this belief and the lack of objective testing that all accounts of pain be taken seriously and managed in matter that is both efficient and ethical.

Proposed by Ronald Melzack and Patrick Wall in 1965, the Gate Theory of Pain accounts for both "top-down" brain influences on pain perception as well as the effects of other tactile stimuli (e.g. rubbing a banged knee) in appearing to reduce pain. It proposed that there is a "gate" or control system in the dorsal horn of the spinal cord through which all information regarding pain must pass before reaching the brain. The Substantia Gelatinosa (SG) in the dorsal horn controls whether the gate is open or closed. An "open gate" means that the transmission cells (i.e., t-cells) can carry signals to the brain where pain is perceived; a "closed gate" stops the t-cells from firing and no pain signal is sent to