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What Is The GABA Chemical?
什么是氨基丁酸化學物質？
What would it be like if wearing a soft cotton t-shirt felt like your skin was being scrubbed with a Brillo pad? For people who suffer from a condition called central pain, such pain is all too familiar.
如果你穿了一件柔軟的棉制體恤衫，但是感覺一直被鋼絲摩擦，那是一種什么感受？那些遭遇過的人稱之為中樞疼痛，這是種通病。
Central Pain on this moment of science.
當今科學里的中樞疼痛。
No one’s sure why some people suffer agonizing pain at the slightest touch, but the secret may lie in an area of the brain called the thalamus, which acts as a gateway for all sensory messages processed by the brain. Nerve cells known as neurons relay messages to the thalamus, which passes the messages to a set of neurons that carry the messages to other areas of the brain.
沒有人確切地知道為什么有些人只是被輕微地觸碰就會感到劇痛，但是一定是和大腦中一個稱為丘腦的地方有關，那是用大腦處理感知信息的通道。神經元這樣的神經細胞把信息傳遞到丘腦，然后丘腦再把信息傳遞到一套能夠把信息帶到大腦其他地方的神經元。
Different sets of neurons bring pain and touch signals into the thalamus, but both types of messages are passed to other areas of the brain by one set of outgoing neurons.
不同套的神經元把疼痛和觸碰信號帶到丘腦，但是不同類型的信息都能通過一套流出的神經元傳遞到大腦的其他地方。
So how does the brain distinguish between signals of touch and pain? Messages of touch trigger the release of a chemical called GABA, which diminishes the intensity of the outgoing message. But messages of pain don’t seem to cause GABA to be released, so they come through at full strength.
因此大腦如何區分觸碰和疼痛的信號？觸碰的信息引起一種稱為氨基丁酸的化學物質的釋放，使得流出信息的密度降低。但是疼痛的信息看上去不能讓氨基丁酸釋放，這樣的話，流出信息就會最大量地涌出。
GABA might be muting some messages by altering their length. Messages of touch might cause a brief burst of information and then be shut off by GABA, while messages of pain continue to fire, unimpeded by GABA. In people who suffer from central pain, GABA might NOT be released in response to messages of touch. With no GABA to turn the touch signal down, every signal of touch may be read as one of pain.
氨基丁酸通過改變信息的長度使得有些信息通透。觸碰的信息可能會引起信息激增，然后被氨基丁酸切斷；而疼痛信息繼續增加，不受氨基丁酸的影響。那些遭受中樞疼痛的人中，氨基丁酸可能在有了觸碰信息的時候不會釋放。沒有能降低觸碰信息的氨基丁酸了，每一個觸碰信號可能都被解讀成疼痛。
