Philosophy, Neuroscience and Technology: The Slave of the Nervous System
Pain. It’s a feeling every person comes to encounter one day or the other. A feeling common to all mankind and yet overlooked by all. We say pain is a burden, a feeling that all of us want to abandon. But a lot of us significantly forget how important feeling pain is and how it can save numerous lives with its greatness. It gives us the sense of telling something is not right, something has to be fixed. Be it physical or psychological pain, it is indeed an amazing sensation produced by certain cells in our body. These are the neural cells, spread throughout the body from the brain and spinal cord to the peripheral nervous system. These cells are the very masters of every function in our body, these cells are the very ones that make us feel pain, which can be both lifesaving and distressing for us humans.
The nervous system itself is a complex entity, with an elaborate network throughout our body that helps it pass the stimulations of pain received by receptors in any part of the body, including the immune system and certain endocrine glands, and even metabolic changes can trigger the nervous system. In scientific terms, the response to certain stimuli impinging on the skin and internal organs can result in pain. This is because the neural information obtained from any injury is transmitted to the spinal cord from where the information spreads to different regions of the brain. After that, the stimulus provokes the emotion, sensory, body movement and hormone controlling regions. Also, the information that connects back to the spinal cord is capable of controlling spinal neurons. These intricate connections cause a complex system that can activate or inhibit pain. In fact, this complex network is the reason why funnily wounded people can walk and run considerable distances without even realising they are in pain, and cancer patients can’t feel the pain of tumour growth in its early stages. But people who have had operations in particular areas suddenly start feeling pain in that area despite its absence. Quite humorous, isn’t it? How one of the most significant sensations can be so misleading? It’s not like cancer patients never feel pain, they just can’t feel it in the early stages when removing the tumour could have been as harmless as they can get. This is why we see so many cases about how a cancer patient was identified in their final stages and died. Quite the setback for this life-controlling stimulus indeed.
Mental illness and shaking palsy:
Mental illness is quite the charming term people use to describe diseases that they cannot fathom. This term is quite often used negatively in society, to describe something wrong with the individual’s brain. Even now some people do not give credit to the bravery of the people suffering from mental illness and surviving. Some people think mental illness is just a fluke term for cowards, and some people are just too tabooed to deal with it. It just makes the lives of certain mental illness patients just worse. I’m talking about schizophrenia, a mental illness that takes away life’s enjoyment from the affected person. It doesn’t mean that other mental patients have their lives any better, but we are talking about schizophrenia because it has direct connections with our master here, the nervous system. So basically schizophrenia causes hallucinations and delusions. Yes, it affects the thinking of our brain, making it disordered enough to impact our daily functions. Sounds scary? Think about it as the core of the nervous system gone wrong; the core of the system that controls so many of our functions gone wrong. Yes, these patients require lifelong therapy, life is genuinely miserable for them. These patients have no well-defined brain area that affects them unlike Parkinson’s, but studies suggest that numerous areas with dopamine are affected. And again, unlike Parkinson’s disease which causes loss of dopamine, schizophrenia exhibits an excess of dopamine activity. This can be due to the abnormally high number of D2 receptors for dopamine. Schizophrenia is also considered as genetic, even though the particular gene hasn’t been identified yet because there is no specific gene for dopamine. Therefore it has been considered as a group of diseases.
Then what is shaking palsy? It’s none other than the other friend mentioned above, Parkinson’s disease. This, unlike schizophrenia, is a degenerative disorder and not a mental disease. It is identified by onset of tremor, muscle rigidity, stooped posture and slowness in movement. But like our friend, Parkinson’s is also caused by a defect in the brain. In fact, there is a loss of motor function due to deterioration in areas of the brain that controls movement. It causes loss of dopamine activity due to the death of neural cells. But here’s an interesting fact- people with schizophrenia are more vulnerable to Parkinson’s disease later in their lives. Quite the turnout, isn’t it? People fated to feel pain throughout their life feel more pain and then die. Such is the nature of neural diseases.
While it is true that neurons control our body, it is also true that technology has advanced vastly to be able to control neural networks too. Interesting, isn’t it? How is technology and AI concerned with the neural network? What will the future of technology bring to the very masters of our being? Want to know more? Stay tuned until next week to know more about even better undertakings with our neural system.
