Summary
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss pain; something of which everyone has an individual experience. What causes it, how do we cope with it, what mechanisms are involved, what is the traditional view of pain and how is that being challenged today? Do we experience pain in the same way and how is emotional pain different from physical pain? What can our experience of pain tell us about ourselves and human consciousness? Is each individual human experience unique or are there experiences we can say apply across all of human consciousness? Is science a blunt instrument for examining subjective experience?With Patrick Wall, Professor of Physiology at St Thomas’ Hospital, London and author of Pain: The Science of Suffering; Semir Zeki, Professor of Neurobiology at University College, London.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
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| 0:44.3 | forward slash radio for. I hope you enjoy the program. |
| 0:47.0 | Hello I'm joined today by two neurologists |
| 0:50.0 | Patrick Wall and Semir Zecky to look at pain and subjective experience. |
| 0:55.0 | What can our experience of pain tell us about ourselves and about human consciousness? |
| 0:59.0 | Is each individual human experience unique or other experiences we say can apply across all of human |
| 1:05.8 | consciousness. |
| 1:06.8 | Patrick Wall is a world expert on the nature of pain and professor of physiology at St Thomas's |
| 1:11.3 | Hospital London. |
| 1:12.3 | He is a co-reginator with Ron Malzawa. of the |
| 1:15.0 | and physiology at St Thomas's Hospital London. He is a co-regionator with Ron Malzak of the |
| 1:16.0 | influential gate-control theory of pain, a reversal of the idea that there's a |
| 1:20.0 | straightforward relationship between pain and injury. His books include |
| 1:23.9 | defeating pain, the challenge of pain, and a new book out this week called |
| 1:27.9 | simply, Pain, The Signs of Suffering. Later this year he'll be awarded a Queen's Medal by the Royal Society. |
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