The Brain's Response to Spinal Cord Injury
May 5, 2015 2:03:05 GMT -8
Post by Lαrα on May 5, 2015 2:03:05 GMT -8
In order to understand the brain's response to Spinal Cord Injury, we need to understand the interaction and relationship between the brain and the Spinal cord. Lets try and make it easy!
The Spinal cord is about the diameter of a human finger and descends from the brain, down the middle of the back.
It consists of millions of nerve fibres which transmit electrical information to and from the limbs, trunk and organs of the body, back to and from the brain.
The spinal cord is surrounded by a clear fluid called Cerebral Spinal Fluid (CSF), that acts as a cushion to protect the delicate nerve tissues from damage from banging against the inside of the vertebrae.
The cord and fluid are all encased within a bony vertebral column
It consists of millions of nerve fibres which transmit electrical information to and from the limbs, trunk and organs of the body, back to and from the brain.
The spinal cord is surrounded by a clear fluid called Cerebral Spinal Fluid (CSF), that acts as a cushion to protect the delicate nerve tissues from damage from banging against the inside of the vertebrae.
The cord and fluid are all encased within a bony vertebral column
The nerves which carry information from the brain to muscles are called Motor Neurones.
Sensory Neurones are the nerves which carry information from the body back to the brain It is these Sensory Neurones that tell your brain that you feel pain and about your skin temperature and touch.
Of course this is what happens with 'normal function' but for those with Spinal Cord Injury this process is affected. The brain tries to make some sense of what is going on with the body and thats not an easy task and where we feel the issues.
After my injury, I needed to make sense of what was going on with my body, I asked every specialist or medical person I came into contact with. The answer was 'Its damaged nerves' That answer just is not good enough.
My brain may not be able to connect efficiently with my body but my logic is still intact so let me process this understanding, explain to me...!
In the end I carried out my own 'research' because it was a strong internal need to make sense of all this oddness that I was experiencing.
My feet taught me the best understanding possible with this dysfunction of the nerves that we compressed and this unable to do their job.
By the way, i just wanted to say, isn't it funny when we read about our badly behaving 'interrupted' signals when talking of nerve damage and loss of movement.
Doesn't it sound so polite..its almost like ''excuse me, i'm just interrupting your nerves for a moment ( or a lifetime), you may lose feeling or movement for this minor interruption but hey
''Look here mister...we arent talking about a train service here that re establishes once the interruption is resolved! lol
Anyways, back to my feet, my brain tries to figure out what is going on here, some signals although interrupted reaches my feet and then goes tell my brain they are on fire!
I expect that my brain isnt getting any signal back that makes any logic so it goes back to tell my feet they are on fire and all that just so I check up they are still there because as far as my brain goes, I could have had them amputated and it wouldn't register.
I hope this makes some sense, im going to do a bit of a series of posts on this just so we can make some sense of it.
Yep, they'r still burning!
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