The brain doesn't hurt

Once again, Descartes

Neurologists like to say that "the brain does not hurt". When the individual is awake, we importune him or her with all sorts of disturbing stimuli:

- Does it hurt?

- No

The brain has no “pain receptors". That explains why it doesn’t hurt. Any pain generated in the head necessarily has to come from the meninges and large blood vessels that do have the required receptors that detect the pain released by the tissues, when these are appropriately disturbed.

Generalizing this conclusion to other perceptions, we could also state that the brain does not smell, see, hear, taste, touch or feel heat or cold. The brain may be sad or happy, relaxed or anxious. We can stimulate specific places with electrodes.

- What do you feel?

- Deep sadness.

Tissues express their adversity through pain, but brain cells, depending on how the serotonin, dopamine, endorphins, adrenaline and other molecules go, do so setting moods and emotions free, that are detected by the corresponding receptors transforming them into signals that reach consciousness, where they are felt by the individual.

Does it hurt? Something is wrong about the tissues.

Are you feeling sad? Something is wrong about the neurons of sadness.

The statement that the brain does not hurt comes in handy for everyone. Everyone wants the brain to be limited to receiving Cartesian signals of pain and amplifying or ignoring them, whichever is more appropriate. We can manipulate those signals promoting the comfort of the tissues with diets, postures, exercises and adequate rests while we avoid the cerebral mood amplification modifying our personality and facing those that are inadequate.

We can manipulate pain signals with drugs that reduce and block them.    

When it comes to sadness and other neural disorders we can go deeper into the matter. We increase serotonin, opiates and cannabinoids, reduce the tone of dopamine and adrenaline and the brain will stop secreting discouragement, hearing voices and distress.

I like asking leading questions to the residents.

- How many eyes do we have?

- Two

- Well, there are two eye cameras that go around the world gathering data, but really there is only one eye, the eye of the mind. It’s in the brain. It is the one that really sees, or rather, builds what we see. It’s also the one that “takes looks”.

Eyes have no vision receptors, but receivers of electromagnetic radiation (light). In the retina, there are light and no-light receptors (darkness). Both are essential for the brain to see edges, contrasts, elementary and complex forms... The eyes do not see faces or trees. It is the brain that integrates visual memory (intelligence) and data from the retina and projects the result on our conscience, right when it crosses this mysterious area of perception.

It’s not nociceptors (receptors of nuisance) that build pain. They simply take data of consummate or imminent threat in the tissues. With these data and those provided by the memory of pain (nociceptive intelligence) the brain hurts ... projects pain at a time and place for a reason and for something...

The something-gen function, the one that causes pain, lives in the brain, like the "vision-gen", "smell-gen" and "sound-gen".

- Doctor, you’re repeating the same thing over and over again...

- I know, but the error of Descartes is well caught in the minds of the pain sufferers and their caregivers while the successes of the great René, his rationalism, the experimental method, the methodical doubt, distrust in what authorities say and senses ... are not part of our thinking and attitudes.

The brain may not hurt but it causes pain. The one that surely suffers from pain is the individual.

- It’s not your column that hurts. It is the brain.

- So it’s ME ...

- Not exactly. It’s your brain ...

- Yeah, ME ... The brain is ME!

- No. YOU are your brain and YOU. Both are important.

- They call it dualism ...

- Naturally, but there are many ways to understand ... A single cell is dualistic. Things happen inside of it (the intracellular) and the result of all this produces information that comes out (extracellular) and so the cell knows something about itself. There is an inside and an outside but they are integrated, interrelated. The brain would be the equivalent in body of what is inside the cells. The individual would be the outside ...

- Just leave it ... all I know is that it hurts

- All I know is that this indicates that your brain has decided to hurt ... here and now ...