Almost all amputee patients have the feeling that the missing limb is still there. 80% of Amputee's feel something called Phantom Pain. Phantom Pain a varying level of pain that's associated with the missing limb. For some patients, the pain is extremely debilitating. It's untreatable besides with pain medication to dull or take away the pain but because the source of the pain is largely unknown, there's no real way to treat it. Scientists have now begun to link Phantom Pain to the fact that the brain retains the image of the missing limb. The brain doesn't know that the limb is missing. The Oxford University team ran an experiment on 18 arm amputees, 11 people born with only one hand and 22 people with both limbs for the control group. They asked everybody to move the fingers on the missing hand while tracking brain activities with an MRI system. The results showed that there was little difference between the brain activity in those with missing hands and those with both hands proving that the brain really didn't recognize the limb was missing.
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It's interesting how the brain can exhibit pain even though there is nothing physically happening in the lost limb. I read in another article that by using mirrors to mimic the appearance of the lost arm, patients have been able to "relax" the muscles in the amputated limb and relieve some of the pain. I thought that I was fascinating that the brain doesn't recognize the fact that the limb is gone. More on the article: http://www.hollandsentinel.com/news/x930795244/Hope-research-looks-for-phantom-limb-pain-relief
ReplyDeleteThis is interesting. I looked up some of the thing that people have done to treat phantom pain, and I learned that sometimes people sit in a chair with a mirror placed in such a way that it reflects their missing hand with the hand that exists, tricking the brain into seeing that the hand is still there and is perfectly fine. Apparently doing this sometimes makes it so that the pain can completely disappear. I wonder what else this could be applied to.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-mirror-cure
I am quite awed by this article. I always believed that the last thing you sense when you loose a limb, is its presence. It's really amazing how the human mind is able to create such an image. I looked more in depth into this topic and found an article that highly supports yours.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.sheldrake.org/experiments/phantom/
This article states that people with phantom limbs feel this way because of the excessive impulse of nerve activity presented in their remaining part of the limb. This causes them to feel as if their missing limb is just like anyone elses normal one!