The other day I surfed onto Neuroplasticity and read the section on chronic pain. Frontal lobe density is significantly reduced in chronic pain sufferers. Also, neuropsychological testing finds impaired frontal lobe function in chronic pain sufferers.
I was born healthy but began to suffer constant pain when I was a toddler, due to a medical mishap that damaged my left paraspinal muscle.
It hurts when I'm upright, using that muscle, and for some time after I lie down. All my life I've been in a lot of pain. Lately I've been lying down for extended periods and enjoying extended periods of painlessness for the first time. I can feel my frontal lobes, how I feel and think, growing. I have an identical twin and we're going to have brain mri scans.
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If there's meaning to my life, if anything matters, it's what I feel and what others feel, and how I make others feel and how they make me feel.
Consciousness and thinking are built on feelings evolutionarily, developmentally and moment to moment. Ignore feelings at your peril.