Pain is an interesting concept for philosophers because it is an incredibly subjective experience. We all know what pain is, but it's very hard for us to describe what it feels like to someone else. We ask patients to use words like sharp, dull, burning, aching, crushing, but pain is often indescribable. Indeed, 20th century philosopher David (Kellogg) Lewis wrote a seminal philosophy of mind paper entitled "Mad Pain, Martian Pain" trying to elucidate this topic.
What interested me about the article I presented at Journal Club is that this makes some sort of objective connection to the subjective experience of pain. When someone comes in with a fever, we can test it with a thermometer. When someone comes in complaining of excruciating pain, what do we have? a lie detector test? But this paper is evidence that measurable biologic phenomena relate to the experience of pain (in fact, this concept is called nociception).
Anyway, I found presenting at Basic Sciences Journal Club to be a great experience. I learned a whole lot doing a brief literature review and studying voltage clamping. The BMB (Brain, Mind, Behavior) faculty were really supportive in helping me understand the tougher aspects of the paper. Putting together a presentation is always a learning experience, and I opted for fewer slides (only twenty-some for 45 minutes) but mostly because I had to study for an exam. I did manage one really bad pun ("at the exact moment in which you see a flow of charges down a voltage gradient, you are observing a current event"), but no one walked out so that was good. I also showed a clip of a House episode with a patient who couldn't feel pain. All in all, it was both fun and educational.
(Image: Picasso - Guernica)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment