I heard about phantom limbs
before but it never caught my attention until I started reading about it in Dr.
Ramachandran’s book “Phantoms in the Brain”. Phantom limbs is the sensation
that an amputated or missing limb (even an organ, like the appendix) is still
attached to the body and is moving appropriately with other body parts. The sensation
is so real for the patients that they even feel pain or that the phantom limb
is paralyzed. Many scientists believe that this is just an illusion but Dr.
Ramachandran have studied many cases and discovered that this phenomenon has a
lot to do with vision and remapping in the motor sensory cortex. To help patients to alleviate the pain in
their phantom limbs Dr. R has created a mirror box that gives the illusion of
the phantom limb moving, this therapy had help not only with the pain but also
to eliminate the phantom limb from the brain of the patients.
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