Phantom limb

severity of the injury because the sensory nerves are blocking out the feeling of pain until after. When people undergo amputation, sometimes, after the surgery and recovery, people will feel like their limb is there when it is not, which is called a phantom-limb. One can feel lingering “phantom” pain, such as stubbing a toe.…

body is a phantom, one that your brain has temporarily constructed purely for convenience.(Ramachandran) The brain. A three pound mass of jelly you can hold in the palm of your hand, and it can contemplate the vastness of never ending space. This book gives an interesting look at how the brain works and the beliefs of people who had damage to their brains, or who had their brains remapped due to amputations. Ramachandran is a professor at the University of California. The book “Phantoms in…

more and more patients will keep reaping the benefits. It is amazing how the brain learns certain behaviors and an individual can have a sensation of having a limb that is not physically present. Deceiving the brain and unlearning the learned pain and behavior is remarkable and it can help so many people, not just those who have missing limbs. There are people that feel certain sensations in their bodies that are a product of their imagination. Of course I do not believe that this applicable…

Natural History of Pain is written by neurosurgeon, Dr. Frank Vertosick, who transforms the vast subject of pain into an exciting and enlightening discussion that is highly engaging. Dr. Vertosick examines many types of pain including migraines, phantom limb pain, tic douloureux, ruptured discs, rheumatoid arthritis, carpal tunnel syndrome, angina pains, and cancer. Each chapter presents a clinical case, the different ways in which cultures viewed the disorder and the biology related to the…

EXPERIMENT 1:
Title: Scratching a phantom limb
Participant/s: Victor Quintero 
Research Conductor: V.S. Ramachandran 
Aim: To analyse and investigate the suggestion of the physical feeling of a phantom limb.
Hypothesis: “the strip of cortex that processes input from the face takes over the area that originally received input from a now missing hand” ~ V.S Ramachandran
Summary of results: Scratching a Phantom Limb:

Procedures Summary: Victor Quintero had lost his left arm…

barreling in. “Mom! You missed it! There was this big demonstration in the main square! This group called the Phantoms are trying to overthrow the Nuinhi and and and it was amazing! They…” “Stop!” Mom had finally managed to interrupt me. “Do you know how dangerous just speaking of them is? They are not the first group to do this, and they won’t be the last. I will not have you risking life and limb with those degenerates!” “But Mom! This is important. I can make a difference.” “Allen, enough!…

affected area. For limb pain, this involves viewing an image of a limb and judging whether that image depicts a left or a right limb. The second stage, motor imagery, requires imagined movement of the area. These imagined movements have been demonstrated to activate motor cortical areas similar to those activated in the actual execution of that movement. The final stage, mirror therapy, patients place their affected limb inside a mirror box and watch movement of their unaffected limb in the…

IR was used to produce the image and the SID was set at 40”. The Right Phantom foot was placed in the center of the IR. The CR was aligned perpendicular to IR to medial malleoli. A 4-sided collimation was created that included outer margins of the foot and ankle. A 68kVp, a 3.2mAs and a small FS was selected. The right marker was placed in IR. PACER Patient in a lateral recumbent position, affected side down. Flex affected limb 45°. Center and align ankle joint to CR. The plantar surface of…

the humorous or elbow result from trauma. The next most important is tumor control. Trans Humeral Amputation is a result of an injury or complication that involves surgically removal of the distal lower extremity, including the ulna and radius, the limb is removed from the elbow to phalanges. Surgically, it’s preferred because a Trans Humeral amputation is through the joint, not involving the bone or tissue but in some cases this is not appropriate. Elbow dislocations and Tran’s humeral…

for secondary qualities. Indirect realism explains that we see a representation of the objects colour in our mind. Indirect realism can also explain phantom limbs. The sensation of feeling a limb when it is actually not there is caused by irritation of nerves at the stump (Mitchell, 1871). A direct realist could not explain how a person perceives a limb to be there. Another example that indirect realists can explain are sound waves. They cannot be perceived directly. They are only heard,…