Posts

Construction of experience: There's something to pay attention to here

Lisa Feldman Barrett's book How Emotions Are Made brought to my attention the science of construction of human experience. Namely, that emotions, concepts, and every other sensation/perception--and even movements--are actively constructed by the brain of the person experiencing them. I have two major dogs in this fight: The desire to understand my own human experience, and the desire to understand why arm pain patterns are frequently so confusing. Per Dr. Barrett: "Your brain uses past experience to construct a hypothesis—the simulation—and compares it to the cacophony arriving from your senses. In this manner, simulation lets your brain impose meaning on the noise, selecting what’s relevant and ignoring the rest." In other words, we are not simply passive recipients of sensory input from the world or even from our bodies. The nature of survival is such that our brains need to predict what might be coming next, based on past experience and the concepts we have developed....
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Sensation: A seeker of reassurance?

Do you every wonder where discomfort comes from? Is it a perfect representation of what is going on in the body? Does pain mean your tissues are damaged? Does hunger mean you are low on nutrients? Does thirst mean you are low on water? Does lower abdominal discomfort mean your bladder is full, and if so, how long can you safely wait before addressing it? Or maybe you don't wonder these things. So often the process goes seamlessly without much thought. In her book Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain, Lisa Barrett points out that a drink quenches our thirst immediately, while it takes about 20 minutes for it to exert its physiological effect in the body. If we take the lack of thirst to mean the body has what it needs, how do we account for that time gap? Could it be that we have simply REASSURED our mind that the need is in the process of being addressed? - - - When a runner gets a twinge of knee pain during a jog, how certain can she be of what this means, and perhaps more imp...
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Intro: Wondering HAND Doc

Welcome. I'm an "injured" musician turned wondering hand doctor, on a quest to understand what the hell happened to my hand function. The way we process sensation and movement is an utterly fascinating topic that I engage with on a reflective, experiential, philosophical, and practical level.  If you haven't yet noticed, the mind is an integral part of this experience. I am grateful to those who put their primary efforts into primary research, statistics, and scouring every piece of relevant scientific literature. I am particularly grateful for those who bring these data together to be digestible by many others.  While these activities are an important part of my job, I seem to get more kicks WONDERING about them. I have decided to enter this discussion using the best of what I have to offer: My personal and clinical experience, my proclivity for reflection and questioning. Science needs the right questions and people to focus on what is not being noticed enough. Scie...
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