I am currently on the train to Wauchope, NSW to visit my husband who is doing a rural medical placement. Now in my head, I decided that train food would be shocking and so when low and behold, I got my meal, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it was not only edible but quite…delicious? I know! It knocked me for one too. However, this … [Read more...]
Just how much can the coloured blobs tell us
July 3, 2012 by 2 Comments
When it comes to treating someone in pain we have one way of knowing if our treatment has effected pain relief, and that is the patient’s verbal report. Perhaps another way of knowing whether pain has changed is to look at what’s happening in the brain. Well, this review is addressing precisely this question. Presented here[1] are the … [Read more...]
Skin: not as superficial as you think
June 15, 2012 by 29 Comments
A human foetus can do it, as can a newt, even a starfish has got it nailed; yet when it comes to you and I, regeneration is a struggle. That is not to say we can’t repair ourselves, we do so but the end result – a scar - can have a profound effect on the physical and psychological aspects of sufferer. Fiona Wood strives to change this. World … [Read more...]
Part two of Parallel worlds collide… and we all see stars, or astrocytes at least
May 22, 2012 by 3 Comments
Immune activation can produce some powerful and longlasting behaviour changes. Take single event learning for example (Ader and Cohen 1975) - the seminal study that proved that the immune system response could be behaviourally conditioned. Ader and Cohen (1975) paired sugar with an immunosuppressive agent in rats. When a foreign agent (sheep … [Read more...]
Parallel worlds collide… and we all see stars, or astrocytes at least
May 18, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Perhaps our language has always hinted at the involvement of glial cells in injury? And, when glial cells outnumber neurons in the brain by 20 to 1, it begs the question who is really in charge of synaptic activity (should that be plasticity) in the brain?I think it is fair to say that ever since the neuronal doctrine captured the imagination … [Read more...]
Pelvic Pain – all the fun stuff
May 9, 2012 by 21 Comments
Many of us here at BiM went to the Festival de NOI a couple of weeks ago. It was fab. However, we know that most of you couldn't make it and we thought we would briefly recap some of the talks so you can feel the passion for yourselves. Here is the first one.....This morning in the practice where I work, I overheard a male patient telling one … [Read more...]
Stressed mice and weak p53: Alas! Not cancer free!
April 20, 2012 by 5 Comments
There is an old and well known adage that stress causes negative health outcomes including the formation of gastric ulcers, heart disease, and cancer. How this takes place in any specific individual is horribly difficult to sort out due to the multiple systems and factors that are involved (we could be lost in a sea of confounders). However, … [Read more...]
Learning and Chronic pain part III
April 17, 2012 by 6 Comments
As we have discussed in part 1 and 2 of this series of posts, there is some evidence that classical conditioned responses play a role in chronic pain (Flor and Birbaumer 1994; Schneider, Palomba et al. 2004; Klinger, Matter et al. 2010). We have discussed the work of Flor and others showing that injury response systems (such as motor and autonomic) … [Read more...]
Learning and chronic pain Part 2
March 27, 2012 by Leave a Comment
In the previous blog Learning and chronic pain Part 1 we discussed a model for a way in which a neutral stimulus (conditioned stimulus or CS) when repeatedly paired with a biologically significant stimulus (the unconditioned stimulus or US) might come to elicit a conditioned response (or CR) that is similar to the response to the biologically … [Read more...]
Learning and chronic pain Part 1
March 22, 2012 by 7 Comments
The way we perceive and respond to various circumstances or ‘stimuli’ changes over time. This is called (drum roll) learning. Implicit learning is the term we give to learning that occurs outside of consciousness or awareness. Examples of implicit learning include non-associative learning (habituation and sensitisation) and associative learning … [Read more...]
Poles support WW2 veteran in trial
February 17, 2012 by 2 Comments
I made up the above title to highlight a small recurring problem in how media frequently portrays science: less than accurately! Especially in the headlines! Who would have thought that my headline actually spoke of a WW2 veteran who used crutches while taking part in a randomised controlled trial?Why am I writing this? The Telegraph! This … [Read more...]
Peer review picks a pack of pickled papers
February 15, 2012 by 1 Comment
I can only speak for myself, but the idea of peer review usually fills a researcher with the diametrically opposed feelings of fear of failure and a genuine excitement that the imminent suggestions will help one’s paper shine. It doesn’t help that the time of judgment usually comes after one has spent countless hours working on presenting … [Read more...]
Get moving for chronic pain research
February 10, 2012 by 4 Comments
WOO HOOOO! You can register for the most important cycling event of the year - UniSA's Ride for Pain. April 29th (the Sunday directly after the NOI2012 conference).There is something for everyone - a choice of the easy 35km on the flat, the 45km into the hills, or for the more serious - a 100km through the Adelaide Hills.Feast on some … [Read more...]
TNF-a: the scroundrel that can smile and smile
January 17, 2012 by 3 Comments
Glial cells keep appearing everywhere I look. No, I have not been shrunken by some Rick Moranis-like character and made to wander around the body (a reference to “Honey, I shrunk the kids”)! But, I have been wandering around the pages of journals, ever-so-slowly trying to get a grasp of how the nervous and immune systems talk to each-other. … [Read more...]
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