How does pain actually hurt?

Question

I’ve always wondered how exactly pain does it’s job. To me the definition of pain has always seemed to be self referencing. What makes the sensation unpleasant and how does the brain know what unpleasant is?

In: 2

Answer 1

Pain is just a signal you’re taking damage, you think of it as unpleasant because some distant evolutionary ancestors wired their brain to treat signals from these particular nerves as unpleasant.

And because taking damage is generally a bad thing for survival those who tried to avoid it survived more often, those who treated these signals as a good thing died out and they’re not our ancestors.