Sensory Pain and Emotional Pain


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Pain is a sensation, but not merely a sensation. Pain has a sensory component and an emotional component.

Title Memo

The pain sensation is a product of the sensory/motor brain, while pain emotion is a product of the limbic system.

Note Text: 1696 Pain sensation and suffering are separate

Certain neurological conditions involve intense and frequent pain. One example is trigeminal neuralgia, also known as tic douloureux. The term neuralgia stands for pain with a neural origin, and the term trigeminal refers to the trigeminal nerve, the nerve which supplies face tissues and which ferries signals fr....

Damasio, Antonio R., "Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain", Penguin Books, 1994, 265-6

Note Text: 1694 Pain an emotion

I would say things work like this: From nerve terminals stimulated in an area of the body where there is tissue damage…the brain constructs a transient representation for that area. The activity pattern that corresponds to pain signals and the perceptual characteristics of the resulting representation are prescribed ent....

Damasio, Antonio R., "Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain", Penguin Books, 1994, 263-4

Note Text: 1660 Feelings become associated with brain images

…feelings modify our comprehensive notion of those other objects and situations. By dint of juxtaposition, body images give to other images a quality of goodness or badness, of pleasure or pain.

Damasio, Antonio R., "Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain", Penguin Books, 1994, 159

Note Text: 1693 Neuromodulators and the function of morphine

[The state of the mind/brain includes the presence/absence of neurotransmitters and neuromodulators.] The release of endorphins (the organism’s own morphine), which bind to opioid receptors (which are similar to those on which morphine acts), is an important factor in the perception of a “pleasure landscape,” and can ca....

Damasio, Antonio R., "Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain", Penguin Books, 1994, 263

Note Text: 1633 Blindsight and cooperation of processing levels

Patients deprived of early visual cortices are not able to see much. (Some residual sensory capacities are preserved in those patients, probably because cortical and subcortical structures related to the sensory modality are intact. After extensive destruction of the early visual cortices, some patients can point to lig....

Damasio, Antonio R., "Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain", Penguin Books, 1994, 99

Note Text: 1803 Trauma leads to fear of feelings, emotions

Traumatized people are often afraid of feeling. It is not so much the perpetrators (who, hopefully, are no longer around to hurt them) but their own physical sensations that now are the enemy. Apprehension about being hijacked by uncomfortable sensations keeps the body frozen and the mind shut. Even though the trauma is....

Van Der Kolk, Bessel, "The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma", Penguin Books, 2015, 210

Note Text: 1817 One system for narrative, one system for feeling

Since then neuroscience research has shown that we possess two distinct forms of self-awareness: one that keeps track of the self across time and one that registers the self in the present moment. The first, our autobiographical self, creates connections among experiences and assembles them into a coherent story. This s....

Van Der Kolk, Bessel, "The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma", Penguin Books, 2015, 238

Note Text: 1823 Sense of ourselves comes from our bodies

One of the clearest lessons from contemporary neuroscience is that our sense of ourselves is anchored in a vital connection with our bodies.

Van Der Kolk, Bessel, "The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma", Penguin Books, 2015, 274

Note Text: 1860 Scenario of basic trauma II

Only a fooTl would deny that the memory of your emotional expert- I ences continues to control your behavior for some timej to come.

Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 15

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