University of California at San Diego neoroscientist Ramachandran showed that phantom limb pain arose from central brain maps that continued to maintain the pain present before the amputation and not from any peripheral nerve sensitization or other observable phenomena. Ramachandran found creative ways to eliminate phantom limb pain by tricking and encouraging the brain to remap itself in such a way as to eliminate the phantom limb and its pain.
Similarly, Melzack and other researchers showed why preventing post-surgery patients from feeling pain by giving them more than adequate analgesia before they feel pain actually allows them to feel less pain and use less overall analgesia. When surgical patients are allowed to feel severe pain, the brain remodels itself to feel even more pain and to exagerate the pain perceived. The consequence is that the doctor is always chasing pain that cannot be controled. When adequate analgesia is produced to prevent the experience of pain (and hypnosis, of course, or mindfulness training can be part of this prevention), then this remodeling process does not happen and paradoxically the amount of pain felt is minimized as is the patient's use of analgesia.
The presence of pain and the activation of pain circuits sensitizes, winds-up, and expands the receptive fields of CNS neurons involved in pain perception. Thus, the perception of pain also involves a dynamic process influenced by the effects of past experiences which shapes the experience of present and future experiences. Sensory stimuli act on neural systems that have been modified by past inputs, and the behavioral output is significantly influenced by the "memory" of these prior events.
Both Native American philosophies and Buddhism teach us to focus in the present to reduce pain and suffering and this is, of course, what mindfulness meditation allows us to accomplish. Buddha said that clinging to what we desire and aversion to what we don't want is the cause of much of our suffering. The hypnotherapist Milton Erickson wrote that one-third of the pain that people feel is the memory of pain they have felt and one-third is the fear of pain they will feel. If we eliminate dwelling in the future or the past, we eliminate 2/3s of the sensation of pain.
I believe we are on the verge of discovering that a number of our contemporary afflictions are disorders of central mapping and processing and not illnesses that exist outside the body independent of the brain. I suspect that fibromyalgia is such a disease. The multiple painful spots that are found on the surface of the body are often migratory and evanescent. We are wiser to search for the disorganized maps and exagerated neural circuits that perceive pain within the brain. I think many of the post-Lyme disease syndromes operate on the same basis. The brain learns to experience symptoms and continues to do so long after the Lyme Disease is eradicated. The person does not require years of intravenous antibiotics or complicated antibiotic, herbal, and/or other potion remedies, but rather, a sensible way to teach his or her brain that the illness has ended and it's all right to stop feeling the symptoms of the illness. Perception can also be illusion.
