The brain is a miraculous muscles that is beautifully interconnected and woven together in order to make the greatest piece of machinery ever, function. The brain is split into many different parts each with their own specific purposes, as well as the largest amount of additional unassociated areas of any mammal to walk the earth. An area of the brain I personally find incredible is the brains sensory neurons. These neurons fire the moment something needs to be processed from the body. From this an even cooler effect is the idea of Sensory Adaptation. This phenomena refers to the idea that when the body is continually stimulated it will eventually diminish the sensitivity, until it is unable to be felt. Like when walking in the cold, or a band-aid on the skin, when the body is stimulated by the same factor for a prolonged period of time, the neurons simply allow it to turn to the wayside of your attention.
I have terrible spending habits. The part of my brain that is in charge of self control and good decision making died a long time ago. This means nothing scientifically, however in the physical realm it means I bought 5 pairs of shoes this week. Now when you buy a new shoe there is initially a very upsetting consequence. Blisters. Now when you buy 5 new pairs of shoes, the blisters are prolonged much longer in order to break them all in. So now a couple days after having these shoes you can imagine I am in a great deal of pain. In response to this pain I have been going through an absurd amount of band-aids. Now allow me to assure you that Sensory Adaption is not a miracle worker so I still feel the blisters in full force, however I never feel my band-aids.
This is incredible to me because I never really thought about the inability to feel the band-aids until Tuesday. It was also incredible because while I thought it was acting as a buffer between my shoes and my foot, it was doing nothing but protecting the skin. So I still 100% felt all the pain associated with the blister, but I felt no band-aid. The constant stick to my skin was low level enough that my sensory neurons decreased my sensitivity to just the band-aid. This very minor change therefore required a reaction, that then my brain deemed unworthy to continue feeling. This is also mind-blowing because it was selective only to the band-aid. When I am walking, I can still feel the pain of my blister but no band-aid. The sensory neurons can be so selective that they can feel one thing but millimeters away they stop the processing of my band-aid. I find that simply incredible.
I really thought this blog was interesting, and quite funny. I too have trouble controlling the decision making portion of my brain, and make poor decisions such as buying too many shoes. My main buying problem is horse-back riding boots, which are not cheap and come as very very stiff leather. They have to be very tight in order to not impede on riding, and so the process of breaking them in is a long one. Since i’m wearing them every day for a long period I never realized that the pain I felt in the beginning completely disappeared after I wore them for a period of hours. I would think that I finally broke them in, but when I came the next day I still felt the pain right in the beginning. Now I realize that I had never broken the boots in, and it was my brain selectively choosing not to pay attention to the pain for long periods of time. Next time I won’t doubt the power of my brain and i’ll double check before I think my boots truly fit me.
I also had a similar experience with sensory adaptation, where I at first felt an object on my skin but after a short period of time, I no longer sensed it on me. My example involved getting a new Apple Watch for my birthday. When I first got it, I started wearing it everyday and I was very aware of it on my wrist because I was not used to having that constant pressure. After about a day, I no longer felt it on my wrist and this is because it was a minor change and small amount of pressure that my brain also deemed unworthy to continue feeling. I also find this incredible because it is crazy to me that at one point, my body sensed the watch on my wrist and I was thinking about the fact that it was there and then because my sensory neurons were adapting to the pressure, I no longer feel it on my wrist.
Same!! I wear a lot of rings on my hands and when I first get a new one, I always am so hyperaware of it on my hands, but after a few days I never notice it!! It is seriously so crazy how our brains are able to block out sensory things and just ignore them!
I really enjoyed reading your post because I am an excessive spender as well so I could totally relate. I could spend hours shopping any day, I use retail therapy a bit too often. Also, you brought up a really interesting point that I didn’t think of, even after class when we learned about this. I agree band-aids barely do anything when it comes to acting as a buffer but I’ve never though about it as an example of sensory adaptation and our neurons just ignore the band-aid and focus on the pain of the blister. This post put things in a cool perspective for me.
It’s really crazy how we don’t notice sensory adaptation until its brought to our attention. I had an experience with this pretty recently, and truly understood once we talked about it in class. I always have hair ties on my wrist because I have a lot of hair and it gets in the way, but I generally keep them on my right wrist. Though as school started again, I switched my hair ties to my left wrist because I’m right handed and they get in the way when I write a lot. It took some time for my left wrist to get used to them, but I don’t even notice them anymore. I never realized that I didn’t even feel the hair ties on my right wrist until I switched and noticed them all the time. I’m really glad we’re able to adapt because its pretty obnoxious when you’re still getting used to it.
This just happened to me last week. I wanted a new pair of vans because my old pair were so longer white, they were completely brown. I forgot how nice an old pair of shoes felt like until I wore these new ones for a while. After about 3 days, my blisters began to form. They started to bleed and every 6 hours would form a new layer of skin. But after walking downtown and back, the pain was unbearable. I actually walked around campus without shoes on and everyone probably thought I was crazy. When I came back, I realized I had no bandaids and had to go all the way back downtown to get some. By this time my feet were screaming in pain. For the next few days I put bandaids on but didn’t feel a single bandaid. All I felt was the stupid blister of course.
I really enjoyed your post because over the summer I had a personal experience with sensory adaptation myself. I had an operation done on my hip and unfortunately had to have a tube place in my body to drain the swelling and help the healing process. Originally the tube bothered me and it was all I could think about, but after a few days I didn’t even notice I had a tube running out of my hip. At the time I didn’t know what sensory adaptation was so this didn’t make sense to me. Now that we covered it in class it amazed me that sensory adaptation as actually the reason why we both stopped noticing the objects on our bodies