Diane
18-02-2007, 01:30 PM
Here is a blog entry (http://www.painonline.com/mt-archives/2007/02/a_theoretical_m.html#more) by Kenneth McHenry, perhaps some relation to Kevin, who manages www.painonline.com . He apparently worked with Patrick Wall. In this blog he puts forth his own idea about how he thinks pain is generated. He mentions:
1. the inverse relationship between motor cortex activity and pain;
2. the insula, which he says registers the "painfulness of pain" (as per Crick);
3. the cingulum, which he says registers that the pain is our own and not someone else's;
4. and that pain may be a result of bits of disagreement or variance from a template of "normal pattern" as per Wall.
Another nuance that I haven't read anywhere else is the "subcontracting" of pain out to various regions of the brain where it can be "lensed" or brought into "focus", but not stored/remembered the way other sensory experiences are.
What is Pain, at the molecular level? We know it is acids around the neurons but what does it mean to the thalamus and cortex? We asked Dr. Kenneth McHenry to discuss this, having known of his interchanges with Dr. Patrick Wall in times past.
Question:
What is your theory of pain?
Discussion:
Thank you Kevin for maintaining this site. I will attempt to give an answer of help to the layperson, while including a little higher grade theoretical information.
It is self flattery to call the following a theory, because it is not readily testable, so it is merely a hypothesis. In a prior article, the author mentioned someone who won the Nobel Prize for showing that memory is holographic. In other words, you can hear again in your mind a musical number, or see a person's face, but you cannot create a pain sensation in the same fashion. Consequently, you have "forgotten it". You can only remember the fact of having suffered. You cannot recreate it by memory.
However, despite the earlier Nobel, it is now passe to speak of memory as holographic any more. Instead, scientists prefer to speak of it as "holographic-like".
The first hologram was invented long before the laser. By using interference between light from different directions, what creates colors on soap bubbles, color could be created.
Once light could be made pure, with the invention of the laser, holography was much, much easier. Crystals with multifaceted sides could be made so that the image looked like the real thing. You already know what a hologram is going to look like before you start rotating it, because you have seen the front. The laser can bounce off the sides of the crystal (lithium niobate is a common crystal used) so that a three dimensional image results, no matter from which direction the electrons are aimed at the hologram. The electrons excite and are focused by the crystal.
The holographic memory model satisfied everyone for a while, beginning about in the 1960's. The problem is that all scientists everywhere had begun to come face to face with the fact that reality is not built like we would imagine. There was a great deal of uncertainty in things. The divisions of reality simply would not fit the data.
For example, one could formerly speak of matter or energy, or matter and waves. With the development of quantum physics, this became more and more difficult. At a fine enough level the definitions broke down. Even Einstein refused to accept that something could be both matter and energy. He kept trying to invent a "theory of everything" so he wouldn't have to accept quantum physics. Later, he called the effort a huge waste of time.
As the science of MRI became really bigtime, it was only too obvious that the spin of electrons and associated energy had some property of waves and some of the properties of matter. Wave scientists tried to describe reality using wave formulas, but it turned out that if you go small enough what you find is not waves and is not matter, but something in between.
This sort of thing began to eat at neuroscientists as well. They were prone to speak of the body and the mind as separate. So what was the mind? Well, it was hard to say. The mind was awareness, but of what? Well, mainly it was awareness of being aware---that was the mind. But where did this awareness come from? Pain is a type of awareness, so where does it come from?
Since it was the only show in town, quantum mechanics, which really was borrowed from Heisenberg's uncertainty mathematics, could not be ignored. The brain was a bunch of electrical signals, if it was anything. These signals seemed to be at the core of life, so what was life? Things were pretty tough to answer until some of the quantum experts began to take a look at the mind, or was it vice versa?
Whichever sequence you believe happened, they began to doubt that holograms were forming in the brain. And in fact, they do not. However, awareness and memory had many of the characteristics of holograms, which means the mind seemed to be the "emerging" of many hologram-like bits of matter/energy in the brain. What was the focus that turned this into thought? There is still no concrete answer, only theory.
However, we will not wait until consciousness is solved before we consider how pain might operate in the brain. If you take an image from a camera lens and take it out of focus you have a very crude hologram. The image is right there, of course, but it must be brought into focus before it appears. That is how it is similar to a hologram.
It is there, but needs to be "lensed". In the brain, there is this tremendous amount of information being passed, most of which is in meaningless bits and pieces, what used to be called "noise".
However, certain brain structures appear to be able to "lens" the bits and pieces until something specific emerges, in hologram-like fashion.
The memory of pain does not follow this arrangement as we said, for we cannot recreate the actual sensation by thinking about it. Therefore, something different is going on there.
Pain must emerge, and be lensed in the present, without being capable of being lensed in the memory. It must return to bits and pieces. Yet, it is so specific while it is occurring, for reasons that survival could depend upon accurate analysis of pain, yet we are destined to forget it. This is at variance with most learning, but spared us some brain space to focus on survival NOW.
Consequently, pain was "subcontracted" out to different brain parts which were not designed to be lensed together at some future date.
The location, or body area, of the pain goes to the primary somatosensory cortex, S1, found just behind the central sulcus.
In front of the sulcus is the primary motor cortex, M1. Transcranial DC current applied to the Motor Cortex, or M1, seems to be able to treat central pain. This suggests a defocusing of the nearby SI, perhaps by supplying too much information.
In a computer you cannot uninstall a program if part of it is running. The parts have to be available and free to be uninstalled. Deranging diffusion of signal at SI may give just enough redirection to allow pains to be "uninstalled" (pain treated) in ongoing fashion without intefering totally in the pain operation. This should lessen pain, paradoxically, by increasing the information. Alternatively, spillover from MI may have created "troughs" of statistical likelihood of signal flow so that information flow was rerouted just enough to prevent accurate lensing.
The significance of any pain is processed by the operculum, which is called SII, which is in the lower part of the parietal lobe.
Finally, as the article at this site by Crick, as well as his landmark article in the Journal "Pain" showed, the "painfulness of pain" is processed in the insula, an area which is hidden by folds of the brain which grow over it.
In addition, there are many other areas which process pain in certain ways, such as the cingulum, which tells us the pain is in us and not someone else. These pain areas are spread all over.
It may be that the spread of operations prevents hologram-like memory of pain. Reassembly does not occur because the parts are not wired to "run backwards". It may also be that these areas are "running", or "on alert" and so cannot be utilized to recreate a pain memory. The memory of "having suffered" is of course available to humans--we just cannot remember the actual sensation in our minds.
These are the types of things neuroscientists discuss in their idle moments. Is any of it correct? Perhaps yes. Perhaps no. However, it may be that the spatial separation and subdivision of pain aspects, and their ongoing "running" prevents lensing at a later time, which prevents hologram-like memory of pain.
It is interesting to think on such things. It is also more consistent with our developing idea of the mind as representing the emerging of defocused energy.
Fifty years from now this will probably all be solved. In the meantime, we hope to see pain effectively blocked much sooner, perhaps by preventing neuroinflammation.
Right now, it appears that making the motor cortex run harder, makes the pain apparatus less able to coordinate the lensing of pain--if one believes quantum physics has anything to do with it.
________________________________________________________
Dr. Patrick Wall and I considered these matters and Dr. Wall was convinced that a template for normality existed in the brain, pain being a non-matching of the template. I was inclined to agree with him. Where we ultimately differed was that I saw pain as occurring discretely and not facing a broad template for comparison, ie. that a tiny locus of disagreement occurred, with realization of what that "spark" of disagreement represented occurring in designated portions of the brain elsewhere, perhaps far away.
I also saw pain as able to recruit nearly the entire brain resources, so that the global quality might explain the failure of pain memory, since the brain would later refuse to devote the resources necessary to recreate the memory, since they were needed to be on alert. The cortex should also be able to have a hierarchy of severity, as well as spatial differentiation of template non-matching. Mere changes in this heirarchy of severity could convert light touch into pain, without an absolute necessity of template mismatching. This could account for both the derangement or dysestheetic nature of nerve injury pain as well as the greatly heightened severity of light touch or temperature change.
Theories should not be offered without giving due attribution to those who stimulated the thought. If Pat were still alive, he would deftly show how I am wrong and no doubt, given the constant revision in scientific truth, he would be correct. His polite astuteness in pain theory was a huge benefit while he was alive and it is like trying to run a boat without a rudder, now that Dr. Wall has gone. It was his humanity which drove him to study pain, and his humanity which helped to ease it in his fortunate patients. Tucked behind it was a brilliance and penetrating curiosity. He was in perfect balance for the tasks he undertook. If he had any flaws at all, it was that he cared so genuinely for his patients and identified with them, which is a bit of a disadvantage if you are British and must never lose the stiff upper lip. He and John Bonica were alike in their genuine compassion which made them wince a bit for patients, which is all that kept them just short of perfection as doctors, and slso made you want to embrace them.
Dr. Crick also, with so much genius he had no peers, virtually on his death bed, completed the information to make the article here to which he contributed possible. Both Dr. Bonica and Dr. Crick themselves had pain states. Dr. Wall developed one only as he was dying from prostate cancer, and then, he thought only of others, taking pains to make sure that certain research projects were in place, to be performed after he was gone. He never complained to me of pain, even as he urged a commitment for continuation of the Wall/McHenry database, three weeks before he passed on.
1. the inverse relationship between motor cortex activity and pain;
2. the insula, which he says registers the "painfulness of pain" (as per Crick);
3. the cingulum, which he says registers that the pain is our own and not someone else's;
4. and that pain may be a result of bits of disagreement or variance from a template of "normal pattern" as per Wall.
Another nuance that I haven't read anywhere else is the "subcontracting" of pain out to various regions of the brain where it can be "lensed" or brought into "focus", but not stored/remembered the way other sensory experiences are.
What is Pain, at the molecular level? We know it is acids around the neurons but what does it mean to the thalamus and cortex? We asked Dr. Kenneth McHenry to discuss this, having known of his interchanges with Dr. Patrick Wall in times past.
Question:
What is your theory of pain?
Discussion:
Thank you Kevin for maintaining this site. I will attempt to give an answer of help to the layperson, while including a little higher grade theoretical information.
It is self flattery to call the following a theory, because it is not readily testable, so it is merely a hypothesis. In a prior article, the author mentioned someone who won the Nobel Prize for showing that memory is holographic. In other words, you can hear again in your mind a musical number, or see a person's face, but you cannot create a pain sensation in the same fashion. Consequently, you have "forgotten it". You can only remember the fact of having suffered. You cannot recreate it by memory.
However, despite the earlier Nobel, it is now passe to speak of memory as holographic any more. Instead, scientists prefer to speak of it as "holographic-like".
The first hologram was invented long before the laser. By using interference between light from different directions, what creates colors on soap bubbles, color could be created.
Once light could be made pure, with the invention of the laser, holography was much, much easier. Crystals with multifaceted sides could be made so that the image looked like the real thing. You already know what a hologram is going to look like before you start rotating it, because you have seen the front. The laser can bounce off the sides of the crystal (lithium niobate is a common crystal used) so that a three dimensional image results, no matter from which direction the electrons are aimed at the hologram. The electrons excite and are focused by the crystal.
The holographic memory model satisfied everyone for a while, beginning about in the 1960's. The problem is that all scientists everywhere had begun to come face to face with the fact that reality is not built like we would imagine. There was a great deal of uncertainty in things. The divisions of reality simply would not fit the data.
For example, one could formerly speak of matter or energy, or matter and waves. With the development of quantum physics, this became more and more difficult. At a fine enough level the definitions broke down. Even Einstein refused to accept that something could be both matter and energy. He kept trying to invent a "theory of everything" so he wouldn't have to accept quantum physics. Later, he called the effort a huge waste of time.
As the science of MRI became really bigtime, it was only too obvious that the spin of electrons and associated energy had some property of waves and some of the properties of matter. Wave scientists tried to describe reality using wave formulas, but it turned out that if you go small enough what you find is not waves and is not matter, but something in between.
This sort of thing began to eat at neuroscientists as well. They were prone to speak of the body and the mind as separate. So what was the mind? Well, it was hard to say. The mind was awareness, but of what? Well, mainly it was awareness of being aware---that was the mind. But where did this awareness come from? Pain is a type of awareness, so where does it come from?
Since it was the only show in town, quantum mechanics, which really was borrowed from Heisenberg's uncertainty mathematics, could not be ignored. The brain was a bunch of electrical signals, if it was anything. These signals seemed to be at the core of life, so what was life? Things were pretty tough to answer until some of the quantum experts began to take a look at the mind, or was it vice versa?
Whichever sequence you believe happened, they began to doubt that holograms were forming in the brain. And in fact, they do not. However, awareness and memory had many of the characteristics of holograms, which means the mind seemed to be the "emerging" of many hologram-like bits of matter/energy in the brain. What was the focus that turned this into thought? There is still no concrete answer, only theory.
However, we will not wait until consciousness is solved before we consider how pain might operate in the brain. If you take an image from a camera lens and take it out of focus you have a very crude hologram. The image is right there, of course, but it must be brought into focus before it appears. That is how it is similar to a hologram.
It is there, but needs to be "lensed". In the brain, there is this tremendous amount of information being passed, most of which is in meaningless bits and pieces, what used to be called "noise".
However, certain brain structures appear to be able to "lens" the bits and pieces until something specific emerges, in hologram-like fashion.
The memory of pain does not follow this arrangement as we said, for we cannot recreate the actual sensation by thinking about it. Therefore, something different is going on there.
Pain must emerge, and be lensed in the present, without being capable of being lensed in the memory. It must return to bits and pieces. Yet, it is so specific while it is occurring, for reasons that survival could depend upon accurate analysis of pain, yet we are destined to forget it. This is at variance with most learning, but spared us some brain space to focus on survival NOW.
Consequently, pain was "subcontracted" out to different brain parts which were not designed to be lensed together at some future date.
The location, or body area, of the pain goes to the primary somatosensory cortex, S1, found just behind the central sulcus.
In front of the sulcus is the primary motor cortex, M1. Transcranial DC current applied to the Motor Cortex, or M1, seems to be able to treat central pain. This suggests a defocusing of the nearby SI, perhaps by supplying too much information.
In a computer you cannot uninstall a program if part of it is running. The parts have to be available and free to be uninstalled. Deranging diffusion of signal at SI may give just enough redirection to allow pains to be "uninstalled" (pain treated) in ongoing fashion without intefering totally in the pain operation. This should lessen pain, paradoxically, by increasing the information. Alternatively, spillover from MI may have created "troughs" of statistical likelihood of signal flow so that information flow was rerouted just enough to prevent accurate lensing.
The significance of any pain is processed by the operculum, which is called SII, which is in the lower part of the parietal lobe.
Finally, as the article at this site by Crick, as well as his landmark article in the Journal "Pain" showed, the "painfulness of pain" is processed in the insula, an area which is hidden by folds of the brain which grow over it.
In addition, there are many other areas which process pain in certain ways, such as the cingulum, which tells us the pain is in us and not someone else. These pain areas are spread all over.
It may be that the spread of operations prevents hologram-like memory of pain. Reassembly does not occur because the parts are not wired to "run backwards". It may also be that these areas are "running", or "on alert" and so cannot be utilized to recreate a pain memory. The memory of "having suffered" is of course available to humans--we just cannot remember the actual sensation in our minds.
These are the types of things neuroscientists discuss in their idle moments. Is any of it correct? Perhaps yes. Perhaps no. However, it may be that the spatial separation and subdivision of pain aspects, and their ongoing "running" prevents lensing at a later time, which prevents hologram-like memory of pain.
It is interesting to think on such things. It is also more consistent with our developing idea of the mind as representing the emerging of defocused energy.
Fifty years from now this will probably all be solved. In the meantime, we hope to see pain effectively blocked much sooner, perhaps by preventing neuroinflammation.
Right now, it appears that making the motor cortex run harder, makes the pain apparatus less able to coordinate the lensing of pain--if one believes quantum physics has anything to do with it.
________________________________________________________
Dr. Patrick Wall and I considered these matters and Dr. Wall was convinced that a template for normality existed in the brain, pain being a non-matching of the template. I was inclined to agree with him. Where we ultimately differed was that I saw pain as occurring discretely and not facing a broad template for comparison, ie. that a tiny locus of disagreement occurred, with realization of what that "spark" of disagreement represented occurring in designated portions of the brain elsewhere, perhaps far away.
I also saw pain as able to recruit nearly the entire brain resources, so that the global quality might explain the failure of pain memory, since the brain would later refuse to devote the resources necessary to recreate the memory, since they were needed to be on alert. The cortex should also be able to have a hierarchy of severity, as well as spatial differentiation of template non-matching. Mere changes in this heirarchy of severity could convert light touch into pain, without an absolute necessity of template mismatching. This could account for both the derangement or dysestheetic nature of nerve injury pain as well as the greatly heightened severity of light touch or temperature change.
Theories should not be offered without giving due attribution to those who stimulated the thought. If Pat were still alive, he would deftly show how I am wrong and no doubt, given the constant revision in scientific truth, he would be correct. His polite astuteness in pain theory was a huge benefit while he was alive and it is like trying to run a boat without a rudder, now that Dr. Wall has gone. It was his humanity which drove him to study pain, and his humanity which helped to ease it in his fortunate patients. Tucked behind it was a brilliance and penetrating curiosity. He was in perfect balance for the tasks he undertook. If he had any flaws at all, it was that he cared so genuinely for his patients and identified with them, which is a bit of a disadvantage if you are British and must never lose the stiff upper lip. He and John Bonica were alike in their genuine compassion which made them wince a bit for patients, which is all that kept them just short of perfection as doctors, and slso made you want to embrace them.
Dr. Crick also, with so much genius he had no peers, virtually on his death bed, completed the information to make the article here to which he contributed possible. Both Dr. Bonica and Dr. Crick themselves had pain states. Dr. Wall developed one only as he was dying from prostate cancer, and then, he thought only of others, taking pains to make sure that certain research projects were in place, to be performed after he was gone. He never complained to me of pain, even as he urged a commitment for continuation of the Wall/McHenry database, three weeks before he passed on.