UCSF Lecture: The Pain is in the Brain

In the Youtube video, Allan Basbaum, UCSF department of anatomy, explores pain and the brain. You'll notice about half-way through, Dr Basbaum does describe how chronic pain is linked to the emotional memory centers in the brain. Very interesting lecture when you apply it to an understanding of TMS, Fibro and chronic pain:



Very interesting too when you apply Dr Basbaum's observations to what Dr Shubiner and Dr Sarno have to say about the origins of TMS. The chemical solutions Dr Basbaum proposes are not Dr Sarno's solutions; however, this video and its slides of the brain certainly illustrates cyber geography in detail.

 

I just noticed this: Allan Basbaum seems to think that rock climbing in the gym is excruciatingly painful. Wouldn't say it exactly discredits his other observations about the how painful emotional experiences become associated with pain memories in the limbic region of the brain, but I've never felt a lot of pain bouldering on the walls of Planet Granite in Belmont and Sunnyvale. Just goes to show how much the appearance of things condition our perceptions of them. Sore fingers sometimes, yes, but excruciating pain? Not much more painful than walking uphill. Very interesting though how the stronger the negative emotions associated with a pain stimulus are, the more likely they are to be perpetuated as chronic pain. That emotion-memory connection keeps resurfacing in the literature, doesn't it?