How well do you understand how pain works? Answer these questions and find out. We'll publish the answers after the pain education class this Saturday.
Pain Neuroscience Questionnaire
True or False?
1 When part of your body is injured, special pain receptors convey the pain message to your brain.
2 Pain only occurs when you are injured.
3 The timing and intensity of pain matches the timing and number of signals in danger messages.
4 Nerves have to connect a body part to the brain in order for that part to be in pain.
5 In chronic pain, the central nervous system becomes more sensitive to danger messages from tissues.
6 The body tells the brain when it is in pain.
7 The brain can send messages down your spinal cord that can increase the danger messages going up the spinal cord.
8 Nerves can adapt by increasing their resting level of excitement.
9 Chronic pain means an injury hasn’t healed properly.
10 Receptors on nerves work by opening ion channels (sensors) in the wall of the nerve
11 The brain decides when you will experience pain.
12 Worse injuries always result in worse pain.
13 When you are injured, the environment that you are in will not have an effect on the amount of pain that you experience.
14 It is possible to have pain and not know about it.
15 Nerves can adapt by making more ion channels (sensors).
16 Second order messenger nerves post-synaptic membrane potential (excitement) is dependent on descending modulation.
17 Nerves adapt by making ion channels (sensors) stay open longer.
18 When you are injured, chemicals in your tissue can make nerves more sensitive.
19 In chronic pain, chemicals associated with stress can directly activate danger messenger nerves.
Moseley, G. L. (2003). "Unravelling the barriers to reconceptualisation of the problem in chronic pain: the actual and perceived ability of patients and health professionals to understand the neurophysiology." J Pain4(4): 184-189.