Predictive processing as a theory to understand pain | Mick Thacker | TEDxKingstonUponThames
Vložit
- čas přidán 8. 07. 2024
- We all feel pain. It’s a universal experience which physically demands our attention. Now Dr. Mick Thacker, a world-renowned Professor of Pain is leading pioneering new research to better understand pain, based on the theory of Predictive Processing. He submits that our brains are predictive machines: experience subconsciously affects how much we expect to feel pain in conditions suggesting threat or danger. The degree of sensation you feel in that moment is influenced by personal senses of anticipation, anxiety and emotion. So deep down, you already know it’s going to hurt. Mick Thacker is currently Professor at London Southbank University and has been working towards his second PhD under the eminent Philosopher and Cognitive Scientist Prof Andy Clark on biologising the predictive processing model for pain.
Mick is first and foremost a Physiotherapist. His ultimate motivation is to better understand the symptoms of the patients and to help the clinicians working with them. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at www.ted.com/tedx
Congratulations Mick! You deserve more acknowledgement. Keep it that way please, and thank you for sharing your knowledge.
Pain relief as a basic human right: Mic drop. Thanks a lot Mick.
Fantastic talk Mick.
Fantastic presentation and explanation by Mick Thacker, who cuts right through the ‘pain noise here by clearly demonstrating how pain is a perception. Mick’s presentation elegantly reinforces and brings together a contemporary understanding of pain, aligning pain science with the recent and exciting advances in the neuroscience of visual and auditory perception. This is essential viewing for anyone involved in the treatment and management of pain . Inspiring and truly excellent!
Great talk. Bravo Mick.
Really illuminating talk. This has helped me to better understand PP, it's an incredibly compelling part of our understanding of pain experiences... I want to learn more.
Great talk Mick!
Sad that this only has 5 comments and 49 likes
How to provide Spanish subtitles for the video? I'll be glad to make this reach more people :)
Anyone else wondering why at 3:42 the hand has 6 fingers? 🤔 was that meant to be?
Pain aligns with our other sensations insofar as a specific apparatus has evolved for the detection of noxious stimuli. We have named this "the nociceptive apparatus". We now have scientific evidence that the function of this apparatus can be altered by exposure of its neural elements to excessive amounts of the products of upregulated neuroinflammation. The neural elements are thereby sensitized and can act as ectopic impulse generators. The pain so experienced is described as "nociplastic", as opposed to pain associated with damage to peripheral tissues ("nociceptive") or with demonstrable lesions of the nervous system ("neuropathic"). The nociceptive apparatus is well developed in foetuses, before the perceptual (cognitive) apparatus has formed. The argument that pain is a perception falls down. Moreover, perceptions of pain can be altered (as Professor Thacker has demonstrated) whereas sensations can only be modulated.
Ok, we talk about science.. And we see the same example again and again.... If the guy with the nail would have had his problem now, he would be a social media star
Persistent pain without adequate explanatory pathology is certainly a sensation in that it is felt. There are 2 causal mechanisms: a nervous system which amplifies non-toxic signalling, and specific conditioned responses that trigger pain signalling. Research clearly shows that reduction of catastrophic thinking, and pain education, have zero effect on persistent pain. It is well and truly time to stop blaming people's pain on their thinking or attitude.
I realize you left this comment a year ago, but I am very interested in learning more about the research of which you speak. Are there some names you can recommend, whose work you think is relevant?
@@lorithorpe6461 sorry for late response - still recovering from spine surgery. I've tried to outline a fair array of research via two papers I have on ResearchGate. The citations will lead to some solid reading. If you do a google search for "researchgate, christine sutherland, a sad state of affairs" and other similar but with "frontiers in chronic pain" the commentary and further reading via the citations might be of interest.
Unfortunately, you were not tht convincing against PAIN IS A SENSATION, as in fact it could be both. Surely the CNS would want an immediate "(like withdraw reflex) response and a more situational computed perspective, the later sub-serving CHOICE in the esponse. My work with deafferentation by dorsal rhizotomy in monkeys convinced me that if a monkey quickly mkes use of the deaff hand, he protects it more than the intact because the latter, he realizes, is responsive to motor needs. As of then he seems to be ever protective of it while sing it extensively with or without vision. I could go on, but I will just say that in neuro, one might best never say never but rather more than meets the experimental eye!
Professor Thacker reinforces the non-controversial observation that our perceptions can be wrong. On the other hand, our sensations do not deceive us.
Pain is localised in a particular part of the body and possesses the attributes of intensity, duration, and its characteristic quality. It therefore qualifies as a sensation.
The example he provided of Andy Murray's behaviour illustrates that the perception of the commentator turned out to be wrong. Poor Andy Murray was in no doubt as to what he was experiencing at the time - the sensation we call "pain".
In Descartes' view, different sensory modalities are due, not to any differences in the mechanical pull of the sensory threads (the peripheral nerves), but to specific differences in the tissues served by the nerves, since they are sensitive only to particular forms of stimulation, as for example with the eye, the ear or the skin [see "Anatomies of Pain (1957)" by Kenneth David Keele].
Professor Thacker rightly gives primacy to pain but he fails to recognise that such primacy is in fact evidence that it can be categorised as as sensation.
The significance of the "nail in the boot" case study is that it raises the question as to whether pain can be caused by psychological factors. It has nothing to do with perception.
Prediction is indeed an important function of the brain. For someone with a fear of injections, a nurse approaching him or her with a needle and syringe filled with fluid will immediately result in anxiety and fear, but never the experience of pain.
The American civil war casualty example illustrates the fact that there are powerful mechanisms within the nervous system that can prevent upward transmission of nociceptive impulses. The "gate control theory" emphasised this neurophysiological mechanism, which comes under the heading of pain modulation.
Pain Management Groups around the world are indeed utilising techniques of pain management (including pharmacological agents) designed to modulate the intensity of the sensation. However, as for our other sensations, there are absolute thresholds which can be variable over time and between individuals. This knowledge helps to explain people's differing "pain" profiles.
As Professor Thacker points out, there are many techniques being used to alter people's perceptions of pain. This is all to the good.
Professor Thacker raises other points for discussion which he obviously could not expand upon in the short time available. Nonetheless, in my opinion, by not accepting that the experience of pain is one of our sensations, he has not properly served the cause of pain science.
Could you explain phantom pain please? F it is a sensation where does it originate?
How dows the down stream neuron know its pain? It doesnt unless it has a grounding signal. That is what prediction does. Can we feel semsation without perception? Without the grounding signal of what it may be most like?
Are unconcious individuals them feeling sensation if it doesnt need perception?