Brain Science Podcast discussion

Hi Ginger, hi everybody,

My name is Diane - I used to be part of the old forum, have followed Ginger's podcasts for a number of years, and helped out a bit by transcribing a few of them. I'm still learning my way around this new site. It looks good though! My entry point on this forum is the recent Shapiro interview on embodied cognition.

I'm a PT, trying in my own way to chip away at Mount Dualism, very interested in the pain-decoding aspects of neuroscience and biomedical science. It's fascinating to read from both sides of the divide (yes, there still is one, even about something as subjective as pain perception/experience!) On its south slope, psychologists closely examine cortical influences on nociception, to determine where and when and by which parts of the brain a mere nociceptive input is changed into a pain experience. On the north slope, the biomedical investigation of pain and labels in text books would have us all still think that Descartes was right and that we have pain fibers transducing and conducting and transmitting and receiving and relaying something called "pain" from the periphery to the brain, and are still looking for a "pain center" even though there isn't one - there have only ever been just traffic patterns noted. Pain is more a verb than a noun. The traffic patterns flow through and connect representational maps (OF the body) that the brain has stored within itself, and the brain tends to ignore the body altogether if something outside itself is more interesting to it. How interesting something might be is gauged by a salience-determining network; increased traffic there will divert attention from one thing to another, from moment to moment, with big effects on pain perception.

Long ago, looking for a way to decode it all, I read a couple embryology texts very closely, and have been fascinated by ectoderm, specifically neural crest tissue, ever since: ectoderm builds the spinal cord and brain, while neural crest builds the 45 miles of nerves within the body, plus all the myelin and glia, plus a whole lot of other things that are both structural AND sensitive, like most of the face and teeth. If I had to pick something with which to destroy dualism, that is natural, comes for free with existence, is biological and irrefutable, that is everywhere in the body and brain having a huge influence on everything, it would be neural crest derivatives.

That is just one small bit of what interests me, so I better quit using up Ginger's corner of the internet, spare you all my rambling, join you on other threads. :)

Diane

Welcome Diane. I am glad you are here.