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Last updated: Fri, Jul 26, 2024
We know that pain has many valuable functions. It signals injury or disease and produces a wide range of actions to stop it. Memories of pains past also warn us to avoid potentially dangerous situations. Severe pain forces us to rest, thereby promoting the body's healing processes. All of these reactions to pain have obvious value for survival.1
When you first burn your hand on a stove top, you don't appreciate the pain, but you do respond to it. The pain itself alerts you to a problem, and the immediate sensation of pain may trigger a reflex that withdraws your hand from the source of damage involuntarily. You learn, if you're lucky, not to do it again. The memory associates features of the event (the stove top, the sensation of heat, perhaps other features) with the ensuing pain. Let that be a warning and let it be remembered.
This model of the pain experience is so well-accepted that it is often used as a paradigm for how learning occurs in introductory psychology courses. You'll see, as you continue through this work, that this model is incomplete in its description of your response to pain, and that the implications of pain-induced learning are hardly settled theory. Although incomplete, it is essentially true, and the value of a pain system seems pretty clear. Pain helps you cope with the injury, and the experience helps you to avoid damage in the future.
The model is simple enough that it's easy to understand that pain is an important adaptive tool even for organisms that are much simpler than we are. Worms and mollusks respond to injury in much the same way that we do, although their memories work much differently than ours. Pain systems are vitally important to animal life, and were present in our ancestors long before Homo sapiens appeared. They function deep within our nervous systems, both literally and figuratively. Just how "deep" these ancient systems are is a question that psychologists and other students of the mind have looked into. See The Psychology of Pain.
Pain occurs whenever any tissues are being damaged, and it causes the individual to react to remove the pain stimulus. Even such a simple activity as sitting for a long time on the ischia can cause tissue destruction because of lack of blood flow to the skin where it is compressed by the weight of the body. When the skin becomes painful as a result of the ischemia, the person normally shifts weight subconsciously.2 (This is an example of the impact of pain below the threshold of awareness. It suggests that conscious awareness may not always be critical in pain phenomena.)
If this explanation of how pain benefits you isn't sufficiently convincing, consider the fate of those who are born with a non-functioning pain system. Few of them survive far into their twenties, even if they are warned, trained, and protected. Myriad small and large wounds, on the surface and within the bones and joints, are found after early death.
We all are prone to stumble, fall, and overstress muscles and connective tissue. This occurs especially in childhood, but affects us all through our lives. When these minor injuries occur, we compensate to protect the injured tissue. We may limp, we may avoid certain movements, we may transfer stresses to adjacent or opposite structures. Resting the damaged area is essential to quick recovery. Those who feel no pain continue to use their damaged tissues. This delays or prevents healing, which can result in the accumulation of dead or dying tissue. Such tissue provides a positive environment for bacterial growth.
The known forms of congenital insensitivity are accompanied by defects in peripheral sensory nerves. In some cases, nerve endings are affected, in others, the nerve axons are irregular. In others, the dendrites that feed into the spinal cord are abnormal. One form, called Riley-Day syndrome or dysautonomia, runs in certain families. The physical development of affected people is abnormal. In some forms, affected individuals are unable to sweat or are severally mentally retarded.3
...pain can serve three purposes. First, the pain that occurs before serious injury, such as when we step on (or pick up) hot, sharp or otherwise potentially damaging objects, has clear survival value. It produces immediate withdrawal or some other action that prevents further injury. Second, the pains that prevent further injury serve as the basis for learning to avoid injurious objects or situations which may occur at a later time. The larger the animal's brain, the more easily such learning occurs, and it generalizes to other situations. In man, the learning involves language and the use of other symbols, so that even people who are insensitive to pain can limit the extent of damage so that survival is possible. Third, pains due to damaged joints, abdominal infections, diseases or serious injuries set limits on activity and enforce inactivity and rest, which are often essential for the body's natural recuperative and disease-fighting mechanisms to ensure recovery and survival.4