Our spinal cord carries our nerves from the tip of our toes and fingers, which travel up the spine to send signals to our brain. Signals involve not only “touch,” but also “pain” which is an essential ‘warning sign’ that warns our brain to refrain from continuing the action that is causing the “pain.” When pain becomes chronic, it becomes a larger problem; it could be mild or excruciating, continuous or episodic, mildly inconvenient or absolutely incapacitating, and could potentially affect our daily lives so that it no longer becomes possible to continue on with our daily tasks.
I enjoyed hearing about other fellow researchers’ projects throughout last week, and since I am especially fascinated by the neural workings of our brain/peripheral nervous system, I was drawn into Matt’s chalk talk, “Optimizing Pulse Parameters in Spinal Cord Stimulation to Treat Chronic Back Pain.” I have to say, his research was more focused on the engineering aspect of neuroscience, which I have not yet had a chance to explore, but still, the big question that his lab is working on solving got my attention. Using the pulse parameters to override pain signals is a clever strategy in relieving pain; if this project succeeds, it will have the potential to help many people who are suffering from continuous, unnecessary pain. However, sometimes “pain” may signal an important warning to us, preventing further damage to the part of our body; I conjecture that isolating the exact body part causes “chronic” and “unnecessary” pain will be a challenge.
Hearing Matt’s chalk talk and his experience with learning the MATLAB program, I was quite impressed! Learning to program, especially MATLAB, is a very valuable skill that will definitely come in useful in the future for most of the researchers. I’m looking forward to hearing how the project turns out!
