Brain Fact Friday ”Chronic Pain and the Brain: Is it All in Your Head?”

<p>Welcome back to The Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast, where we cover the science-based evidence behind social and emotional learning (for schools) and emotional intelligence training (in the workplace) aligning our lives to the most current brain research.</p> <p>This week's Brain Fact Friday will explore: ✔ How neuroscience is a new field of study--where it began in academics in 1960, and where it is today. ✔ How fMRI scans changed the way we can look at and study the brain. ✔ Where advancements in neuroscience are going (in education and other sectors). ✔ How fMRI scans can help us to learn more about chronic pain and disease.</p> <p></p> <p>IMAGE CREDIT: PAGE 51 of National Geographic's June 10, 2022 Issue on The Brain: Discover the Way Your Mind Works.</p> <p>I’m Andrea Samadi, an author, and educator with a passion for learning specifically on the topics of health, wellbeing and productivity, and launched this podcast to share how important an understanding of our brain is for our everyday life and results--whether we are a teacher or student in the classroom, or in working the modern workplace.</p> <p>This season, Season 8 of the podcast, and our third year of creating content, I wanted to take a deeper dive into the importance of brain health since this 3 pound organ of remarkable matter that we all have, our brain, literally controls everything for us.  We all have a brain, but it still boggles my mind that we were never taught how to use it. We have now entered this “new era of neuroscience”<a href='#_edn1'>[i]</a> where we are gaining a deeper understanding of what makes us human, and the latest breakthroughs in science that can propel us all forward in ways we never could without the latest discoveries in science. When we think about how new these concepts are, this topic is truly fascinating, and I can understand why there is so much interest in this podcast, along with others of the same theme. Who wouldn’t want to know the latest secrets of the brain, and how