CNS problem?

Question

a person burns her finger on a hot stove. She inmediately puts her finger in cold water.
Did the stimulus go only to the spinal cord, to her cerebrum or both?

Answer 1

As soon as the finger comes in contact with the hot stove, two types of receptors get stimulated on the skin: those that subserve pain and those that subserve temperature. These receptors are connected by nerve fibers to their cell bodies which lie in the dorsal root ganglion. Since these neurons are bipolar, they have another set of fibers which go to the spinothalamic tract on the lateral white columns of the spinal cord. From here, 2 things happen: (1) there is a spinal reflex arc in which these pain fibers go on to motor neurons within the anterior horns of the spinal cord and get the hand to be jerked away from the painful stimulus; (2) another part climbs up to the somatosensory area on the cerebral cortex via the thalamus and makes you 'aware' that you have felt the pain. So you actually jerk your hand away much before you actually feel the pain.

Now, the act of you putting the finger in cold water requires a much more complex pathway than that. It requires your anterior frontal lobe to tell you that something else needs to be done to negate the damage done to your finger. How do you know what exactly to do? You do this by accessing your information database, namely your memory, from the hippocampus of the temporal lobe, telling you that the best thing to do next is to put your finger in cold water. This information is then relayed to your occipital lobe (visual cortex) and your anterior frontal lobe (planning cortex) which determines the distance between your finger and the cold water tap, then relays it next to your posterior frontal lobe where the motor cortex lies which executes the movements of your finger.

Once this is done, this entire episode again gets stored in your memory database.

Answer 2

Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor. If the behavioral change is sudden and unexpected by all means seek an evaluation. Sudden and unexpected changes in behavior can be an indication of neurological dysfunction. Or severe psychological stress. It's also possible that stunted growth has given her the intellectual skills of a 7-10 year old but the body of a younger child (or the opposite body/mind connection could be true). In this case, perhaps the condition is more social and a matter of expectations rather than being physiological. In this case, it may also be that social problems at school or elsewhere have resulted in the behavioral problems. My recurring thought is: autism. But I'd much rather agree with your/her doctors that it is a neurological disorder. Typically CNS disorders can be difficult or impossible to diagnose until later in life when more advanced intellectual and reflex tests can be preformed. We can't really tell you anything you don't already know. If money is not the major issue, you should have her taken in for evaluation by a psychologist who would eventually recommend you to a neurologist in turn since it's often impossible to say if a specific disorder is rooted in the body or the mind prior to extensive testing.

Answer 3

Both. The response of jerking her finger away from the painful stimulus is a spinal circuit, but the act of putting her finger into cold water requires the planning, execution, and cognitive thought of the cerebrum.

Answer 4

Both. She will jerk back(spinal cord) before she feels the pain (brain).

This is even easier if the foot is involved... the eye will tell the foot to pull away, and the pain comes later.

Answer 5

only till spinal cord. but the following reaction to get the hands into cold water reaches cerebral cortex

Answer 6

Both.