Biography
It all comes down to protection! The brain needs to be able to ignore predictable everyday sensations, so it can be ready for more important ones. Imagine if it responded dramatically every time the soles of your feet touched the ground, or you blinked your eyes. Instead, it must be ready to react to unexpected, potentially dangerous sensations like, say, a red-back spider crawling down your neck.
But sometimes the system goes haywire… In some cases, when nerves are injured the wires for pain and everyday sensations cross. It can occur after an injury or spontaneously. It occurs in shingle, because the virus that causes the illness, varicella, nests in the nerves. Nerves for everyday sensations are co-oped into the pain system, transforming mild sensations, like the brush of a sleeve, into agony.
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