Neural Feedback

I've been giving the concept of neural feedback a lot of thought lately, in fact I cant get it out of my head (a little neurology humor for you).  I have been contemplating several aspects about the flow of feedback, how our brains use it, and why it exists.  When thinking about it, it becomes hard to discern what is feedback and what is memory, or if in fact they are the same thing.

For example, I went to the dentist last week to have several old fillings replaced.  I hate going to the dentist.  I am an ardent anti-dentite.  But my dentist is actually a pretty caring guy, and does a great job of minimizing the stress and the pain.  That being said, the experiences and memories I have of having work done inside my mouth are vivid.

So here I am sitting in the dentist chair, my entire face is numb, the drill is humming along, and I have 2 individuals in biohazard suits draped over me like zombies looking for a meal.  What am I thinking about at this very moment?  Neural feedback of course.  I was remembering a recent experience of having a crown last summer, and the required root canal to remove the nerves from the tooth before being capped.

To take part in this experiment and experience some neural feedback, continue reading and try to allow yourself to sense some of the pain and anguish of your own personal experience.

For a reason unknown to me at the time, I remembered that root canal, right there, mouth agape, staring at the biohazard suits, I remembered.  I remembered the Novocaine.   My tooth was in the upper back left, so I had to get a shot into the roof of my mouth.  I had never had a root canal before, so I had never experienced white hot pain like this before.  The torturer (nurse?) warned me, "you're going to feel a little pinch".

Well I felt a pinch alright, only the pinch ran from the back of eyes down to the heels of my feet.  I felt the needle enter the roof of my mouth, and I felt my eyes widen as the shaft of stainless steel penetrated the little rib like bones of my pallet.  Then she pressed the syringe plunger, releasing milliliter after milliliter of stinging Novocaine into the target zone.

At this point I felt as if I was being lifted out of the chair by a giant.  My entire body raised straight up trying to free the roof of my mouth from the lodged saber.  The she-devil held my shoulders down trying to gain another centimeter of flesh, "this is only for your benefit!!, STAY STILL!!" she cautioned.

Now I'm a very observant person.  And after all the reading and writing I've done on the workings of the human brain, I realized what I was doing to myself.  As I was contemplating this memory, my hands clenched, my eyes focused, and I felt myself getting warm.  My right calf felt like it was going to cinch up in a painful cramp.  I was creating physical stress on my own body through memory recall, or neural feedback.

So lets break this down.  Neurons in my brain were able to produce a pattern, or memory of that experience, and push that memory to the external layers of my brain, where that memory was then translated into the physical responses resembling the experience of that day.  This is the power of neural feedback in the grand sense. 

This makes it appear as though our brains are cross wired, meaning that information doesnt just flow in a single direction.  This then begs the question, are our neurons and dendrites directional?  Does a neuron know where it inputs come from, and where to send its outputs? And if this is the case, how does it work?

Lastly, after I observed that my memory of a root canal had induced stress, the stress subsided.  I was still remembering the experience, but I cut off the output to my physiology.  Ok, so where did the outputs of those neurons that were firing to make me clench my hands go?  Did they continue on the same path, only to be ignored?

Still have lots of questions to answer, and much to think about.  Hopefully I can think about it at home, without the sound of that drill.