Pain in the Brain

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Pain in the Brain

"How can the brain think that the brain itself hurts (e.g., during a headache)? Are headaches and migraines (excluding secondary headaches) essentially psychosomatic in nature?"

Before I answer your question, I need to say one important thing: ouch!

That’s right – as I sat down at my keyboard to answer your question, I stubbed my toe quite painfully on my desk. Fortunately, this is a great time to explain how the brain processes pain, which will help answer your question.

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Neurotalk S5E5: Mark George

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Today, our guest is Mark George, Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), where he is director of the Brain Stimulation Laboratory. We’ll be speaking with him about using TMS to probe causality in the human brain, how vagal nerve stimulation could be working to treat depression, and a little bit of entemology /beekeeping. 

Brains that go bump in the night

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Brains that go bump in the night

“The witching hour… was a special moment in the middle of the night when every child and every grown-up was in a deep, deep sleep, and all the dark things came out from hiding and had the world all to themselves.”
-Roald Dahl, The BFG

In folklore and literature, the sleeping hours represent a state of heightened vulnerability, a time when the “ghoulies and ghosties, and long-leggedy beasties” roam free and wreak havoc. Today, neuroscientists are unraveling the biological underpinnings of nightmares, night terrors, and other sleep disturbances. 

Recently, I had the chance to sit down to discuss these nighttime phenomena with biologist H. Craig Heller, PhD, a member of the Stanford Neurosciences Institute and an expert in the neurobiology of sleep. 

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New in Neuroscience: How twitching in your sleep helps your brain develop

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New in Neuroscience: How twitching in your sleep helps your brain develop

Have you ever seen a puppy or infant twitching at night and wondered if he/she was having a nightmare? As worrisome as they may be, these sleep twitches, termed “myoclonic twitches”, are not exclusive to our bad dreams. In fact, many species exhibit these twitches, and an increasing amount of evidence suggests that they may play a more important role during development than occasionally disturbing our sleep.

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New in Neuroscience: Microglia in your brain put their trust in your gut

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New in Neuroscience: Microglia in your brain put their trust in your gut

Ancient humans often referred to the “bowels” as the seat of emotional experience. We now attribute higher functions such as thought and emotion exclusively to our brains, but the idea that what’s going on in your gut may control your instincts may actually have some biological credibility.

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