Um, ow.

We have this plastic ball. It's made up of ten half balls, in decreasing size. They nest. If you stack them, you get a tower of nested hemispheres. If you click them together starting with the two smallest half balls, you can continue to add hemispheres of injection molded polystyrene, until you have one ball containing all the other part-balls. It tends to be heavy. And it's not cheaply manufactured -- the pieces snap together firmly.

So Houston ran over today and said "Daddy! Do you think this is a whole ball or just empty?" I was lying on the ground at the time, playing with Zane or something. I gushed some enthusiastic response, and Houston said, equally enthusiastic, "I'll show you!!!!!" and he proceeded to try to break the hemispheres of the ball apart. It broke apart. The heaviest portion of the ball flew at my face and struck it. I rolled on my tummy and said, also enthusiastically, "OW!!!!!" and writhed around for a minute, trying to make the intense, white-hot pain subside. It did, but in the meantime, Houston said "Oh Daddy!!! I"m so sorry!!!" He did a great job being sympathetic. But Katrina flew to my side and crouched down near to where i was grinding my nose into the carpet and said with perfect loving horror, "Daddy! Daddy! Are you okay?" and i could feel her hands fluttering on me, and her little breaths puffing. Oh man, is she ever a cutie.

She's the one who ran immediately to get the bandaid, while Houston looked mortified and followed me around. Poor kid.

Which brings me to two questions; how come sometimes the only response you can have for pain is to writhe? Does rubbing your feet together actually HELP the pain go away? And also, how come people curse when they get hurt? I couldn't think of anything but writhing and saying "OW!"

It is simple: sending messages to the brain to writhe makes the brain too busy to feel ALL the pain messages. So you think that you are less in agony. That’s MY theory.
-- mummu (Email) - 31 January '08 - 07:48

That’s also Ronald Melzack’s theory (Gate Control)... sort of. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gate_contro..

This:
“One area of the brain involved in reduction of pain sensation is the periaqueductal gray matter that surrounds the third ventricle and the cerebral aqueduct of the ventricular system. Stimulation of this area produces analgesia (but not total numbing) by activating descending pathways that directly and indirectly inhibit nociceptors in the laminae of the spinal cord (Kandel et al., 2000). It also activates opioid receptor-containing parts of the spinal cord.

Afferent pathways interfere with each other constructively, so that the brain can control the degree of pain that is perceived, based on which pain stimuli are to be ignored to pursue potential gains. The brain determines which stimuli are profitable to ignore over time. Thus, the brain controls the perception of pain quite directly, and can be “trained” to turn off forms of pain that are not “useful”. This understanding led Melzack to point out that pain is in the brain.”

Means that when you rub your feet, it does actually interfere with your brain’s perception of pain. Cursing when you’re hurt is probably much more Pavlovian. :)
-- Eirc (Email) - 31 January '08 - 10:41

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