Question: How do we know when we are hurt?

Simon Spichak answered on 27 Apr 2020:

Hi Peter!

Pain is a very interesting topic in neuroscience! When we are hurt, we have special nerve endings that can respond to this pain. There is a special protein, called an ion channel that is specific for pain detection. When your body releases different molecules to say ‘Ow, I’m hurt!’ – they activate these pain detection proteins on these pain-sensing neurons. Now this pain can travel up our spinal cord to our brain and sometimes, if there is an intense immediate threat, the signal doesn’t even need to travel to the brain. Technically, we might not yet realize when we’re in pain sometimes! For example, if I accidentally leave my hand on a working stove – my hand will pull back automatically before I can even process the pain. Now what’s interesting is there is also an emotional aspect to pain that is encoded in our brain! Different parts of the brain serve different roles as well, in recognizing pain – for example a region called the anterior cingulate cortex is able to encode fear avoidance and unpleasantness!

Now you may wonder, wouldn’t it be awesome to not feel pain? Actually there are some people that have a genetic mutation, which prevents their pain-sensing protein on their nerves to work. As a result, they don’t detect pain and might not go to a doctor when they might need to. These individuals have a dramatically shorter lifespan because often times, they aren’t able to ‘know’ that something is wrong!

Now of course this is just the physical pain aspect. Remember that different parts of the brain can process different aspects of pain – well the amygdala is in charge of the emotional aspect of pain. In addition, we also know that when we feel sad – the hippocampus (a seahorse shaped part of the brain) is also activated and contributes to knowing that we are emotionally hurt!

Hope this answers your question!