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ninevirtuesOne of Mom's favorite stories about me involves the time when, as a three- or four- year old, I fell and hurt something. Mom offered to kiss it better, and did.
The result: I looked up at her and remarked, bitterly, "You kissed the wrong spot."
I think Mom concluded from that incident that her maternal mojo had somehow ceased to work. The teeming multitudes (and yeah, as a four-year-old, I could apparently teem like a multitude, and Mom is insistent on that point)... anyway, the teeming multitudes lost the faith. Mom... was... wrong.
Well, I stand before you today prepared to set the story straight by explaining the gate theory of pain control, which is (bear with me, here): "...information from first-order low-threshold mechanical afferents and from first-order nociceptive afferents converges onto the same second-order neurons....thus, if the low-threshold mechanical afferents are more active than the nociceptive afferents, the mechanoreceptive information is transmitted and the nociceptive information inhibited." (Lundy-Eckman, 2002)
In plain English, that means: You have some nerve fibers in your skin that transmit pain. You have other ones that transmit pressure (mechanical stimulus, like touch, or kisses). Both of these kinds of fibers communicate with larger, central fibers that can only carry one message at a time. These fibers prefer to carry the mechanical message. So-- if you get hurt, then you touch the hurt area with a mechanical stimulus like a kiss, the kiss message makes it through but the pain message does not. (If, on the other hand, you kiss a different area than the one that is hurt, the kiss message and the pain message both make it to the brain in equal measure. Trust me on this one.)
So there you have it, Mom: You were using highly advanced neuroscience techniques, you were just using them in a slightly inexact location. After all these years, I can now tell you that your maternal mojo was working just fine.... even if it was slightly misdirected. ;-)
The result: I looked up at her and remarked, bitterly, "You kissed the wrong spot."
I think Mom concluded from that incident that her maternal mojo had somehow ceased to work. The teeming multitudes (and yeah, as a four-year-old, I could apparently teem like a multitude, and Mom is insistent on that point)... anyway, the teeming multitudes lost the faith. Mom... was... wrong.
Well, I stand before you today prepared to set the story straight by explaining the gate theory of pain control, which is (bear with me, here): "...information from first-order low-threshold mechanical afferents and from first-order nociceptive afferents converges onto the same second-order neurons....thus, if the low-threshold mechanical afferents are more active than the nociceptive afferents, the mechanoreceptive information is transmitted and the nociceptive information inhibited." (Lundy-Eckman, 2002)
In plain English, that means: You have some nerve fibers in your skin that transmit pain. You have other ones that transmit pressure (mechanical stimulus, like touch, or kisses). Both of these kinds of fibers communicate with larger, central fibers that can only carry one message at a time. These fibers prefer to carry the mechanical message. So-- if you get hurt, then you touch the hurt area with a mechanical stimulus like a kiss, the kiss message makes it through but the pain message does not. (If, on the other hand, you kiss a different area than the one that is hurt, the kiss message and the pain message both make it to the brain in equal measure. Trust me on this one.)
So there you have it, Mom: You were using highly advanced neuroscience techniques, you were just using them in a slightly inexact location. After all these years, I can now tell you that your maternal mojo was working just fine.... even if it was slightly misdirected. ;-)
