A New Map to Deal with Neuropathic Pain
By Kate Willette|2021-06-29T14:25:01-04:00July 1st, 2021|
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Have you ever watched a 3-month-old baby in motion? Even lying on his back, it’s obvious that my new grandson doesn’t lack muscles. He’s definitely moving those limbs, but he has no control of them; he’s just thrashing. Control will come gradually as his young brain slowly builds the collection of networked cells that allow him to sense where his fingers and toes, hands and feet — all the bits of him — are located at any given moment. His process of swinging wildly at his mom’s dangling earring will change, in the space of weeks, to a smooth reach and a firm grab. Ouch.
The name we give to that inner sense of our own body in ever-changing relation to time and space is proprioception. It develops throughout infancy, childhood and adolescence by way of a feedback loop that involves using all the exterior senses to form a sophisticated, integrated series of networks inside the brain, literally constructed over time through trial and error. Spinal cord injury commonly steals proprioception, and [...]