I have a substantial dent in my skull. When I asked my mother what happened, she said she thinks it happened at birth. Though it doesn’t show in any of my baby pictures. After that all she could master was her psychopathic stare. So, it remains an accounted for. All I can deduce is it must have happened at a time where my bones where still flexible enough. But I had already enough hair to cover it up. And that it must have been painful. It is well established that painful experience in early life changes the child’s brain structure and function. But I also found evidence in the literature that it effects our emotions longterm.
The topic of early life pain is explored in the context of babies requiring medical examination or surgeries. I don’t think it has been considered in connection of child abuse. However, pain due to surgery is easier to categories for scientific research purposes. Compared to trying and categorize abuse, anyway.
Last year I listened to a presentation by Maria Fitzgerald. She is a leading researcher in the field of pain experience in early life. She said something that rang very true to me. We, as a society and scientific community spent all this time and money on diabetes and cancer research. But hardly anyone looks into the consequences of early life experience of pain. Maybe we are a bit selfish that way. Only really caring about our own future and not actually about making life better for our children. Fixing old people rather than saving the next generation from suffering the same.
The Research
A recent study coming for her lab explored:
- the subjective pain intensity
- And the long term emotional and cognitive effects
in adult rats with early life pain (ELP) experiences.
Therefore, they measured gamma and theta waves in the brain between the somatosensory cortex and the medial prefrontal cortex.
The shorter, gamma waves in the somatosensory cortex were increased in the animals with ELP. More gamma waves indicate that these rats experience the pain as more intense. Rats with ELP are hypersensitive to pain. The rat model is very established for these experiments, so that the findings can be projected to the human biology.
The longer, theta waves are less associated with acute signals but rather with longterm information storage. These longer brain waves also travel further and are used for communication between different brain regions. It is expected that after a painful experience communication between the sensory cortex and the emotional medial prefrontal cortex is elevated. Because nobody likes pain. This study analyzed the aptitudes of theta waves between the two brain regions. And found that in rats with ELP it was increased for 4 days. Compared to only 1 day in rats without ELP. This indicated that people with ELP too are longterm compromised after a painful experiences.
As I have related here before, even the look or taste of blood makes me faint. Which makes me think I’m emotional compromised by pain… The positive side I see, is that with meditation and hypnosis we can influence our brain waves. And start the healing process.
Early Life Pain Experience Changes Adult Functional Pain Connectivity in the Rat Somatosensory and the Medial Prefrontal Cortex (2022) P. Chang, L. Fabrizi, M. Fitzgerald
