Phantom limbs

From Psy3241

General

Phantom limb syndrome causes a phantom sensation related to an individual's amputated or missing limbs. Since it does occur in people born without limbs, it is suggested that people are born with inherent wiring with regard to the sensations felt in the limbs of the body. The afflicted individual feels as though the missing limb is still a part of his body. It feels as though it is moving appropriately with the rest of the person's body, despite the fact that the limb itself is clearly nonexistent. It is believed that the syndrome is caused by an attempt by the brain to reorganize the sensory information that has been disrupted by the amputation.

Phantom limb syndrome was first diagnosed in the 16th Century by French military surgeon Ambroise Pare. He noted that amputees would report severe pain in their missing limbs. [Image ]

Phantom limb pain

Phantom limb pain is, as the name clearly suggests, the common painful sensations felt in the nonexistent limb. However, such pain can also occur when limbs are fully intact; it can be present in individual's who have undergone some sort of injury - spinal cord or peripheral nerve injuries - in which the brain has been disconnected from the body.

The pain felt can be described as burning, aching, or as if the hand is being crushed; this is not a definitive list but a sampling of descriptions as the pain seems to vary among the afflicted. People have described it as being excruciating. Some even say that it feels as though their hand painfully making a fist so hard that they can feel their fingernails digging into their skin.

Unfortunately, no singular cause has been discovered for phantom limb syndrome. It could be caused by damaged nerve endings that reform oddly and, as a result, change the way in which they are connected to the central nervous system. Altered neural activity in the brain has also been blamed for phantom limb pain. Researchers have even proposed that the level of stress and number of personal problems a person has can increase the chances of phantom limb pain expressing itself.

Treatment

As mentioned, it is believed that the disorder of sensory information that occurs after an amputation phantom limbs. Consequently, certain treatments that attempt to reconstruct a coherent body image are available.

Artificial limbs have helped to alleviate the pain because they, in a way, allow the brain to make sense of the interrupted neural information it receives from the phantom limb.

Mirror box techniques, in which the patient puts the amputated into a box and sees a reflection of the existing hand where their other hand would be, has been shown to be an effective way to reduce and even eliminate phantom limb pain. By unclenching the fist the person sees in the mirror, the person's brain is seemingly tricked into reorganizing the sensory input. Many patients report a progressive telescoping of the limb; this telescoping is represented by the picture shown above.

[Image ]