The Pain Brain

I first heard about neuroplasticity in the context of learning. New experiences and subjects can spark new ways of thinking in us. But I hadn’t realized that for these new ways of thinking to occur, our brain physically has to change! 

There is one study of London cab drivers that looked at new cab drivers' brains, then looked at the brains of those same cab drivers four years later. The veteran drivers’ hippocampus (the area responsible for memory) had grown as they learned the twisting streets of London. 

This is exciting stuff, but there is a darker tale to be told here, too. Being in chronic pain is a neurological activity. Regardless of where initial injury took place or which disease took hold, pain happens in the brain. And as we spend day after day in pain, our brain transforms into the Pain Brain. 

In the same way that a cabbie’s brain becomes more capable of remembering, our chronic pain brains become more efficient and capable of creating and staying in pain.

When I first learned this, I was shocked. Imagine the cosmic horror of perpetual pain, not because of some disease but because my brain was practicing pain day in and day out. 

Thankfully, neuroplasticity cuts both ways. In the same way that we can change our brains into pain brains, we can change our brains into managed pain brains. There are whole ways of learning, thinking, and being that change our relationship to that pain and, eventually, change the brain into a different type of brain altogether.