Pain Education - Reflex
Your brain sometimes sends unnecessary pain signals. But why does it do that?
One reason is conditioning: Remember Pavlov’s reflex. When presented with food and a bell, it started salivating to the point that, it started salivating even when the bell was rung without food.
Food is natural stimulus or unconditioned stimulus
Salivating to the food is natural response of unconditioned response
The bell without food is a conditioned stimulus.
The dog salivating to the bell is a conditioned response. The longer the association between the food and the bell, the longer the conditioned response to the bell alone.
Generalization is when the dog salivates to a similar sounding bell (without food).
Discrimination is when the dog later learns to tell the difference between the two bells, and stops salivating to the new bell.
Extinction is when the dog stops salivating when the association between food and bell is broken.
Spontaneous Recovery is when the dog salivates with bell alone again after a period of extinction.
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