VR Cures Amputees' Phantom Limb Pain

An anonymous reader writes, "Scientists have developed a virtual world like Second Life where real-life amputees have their limbs restored. The experience can cure patients of the perception of pain in their missing limbs. From the article: 'The machine is designed to combat phantom limb pain (PLP) — a sensation of pain experienced by an amputee that appears to originate in the missing limb. Intriguingly, researchers have discovered that if a person's brain can be tricked into believing they can see and move a "phantom limb," this motion reduces the perception of pain in PLP.' The graphics used by the computer look very crude, almost comically so, but apparently the system works."

Comments

what about double amputees?

[maddogsparky]

Lots of posters are mentioning the mirror trick. Unfortunately, that won't work with some double amputees (i.e. portions of both arms or both legs amputated). This seems like it might help in these cases if they have some way to provide input corresponding to the phantom limb.

Re:visualization

[Puff of Logic]

Actually, it can be done with a cardboard box and a mirror. If I recall correctly, V.S. Ramachandran detailed performing precisely the same technique in his book Phantoms of the Brain for patients who had a phantom hand that was painfully clenched into a tight fist.

In essence, he had the box and the mirror positioned such that the patient would insert his good arm into the box and have the amputated arm stump occluded. Obviously, a reflected image of the unamputated limb would appear in the mirror to the patient, who was then instructed to position the "phantom limb" such that it superimposed the mirror image. This done, the patient was then instructed to repeatedly clench and declench both hands.

Obviously only one hand was real, but the correlation between what the brain felt was happening and what the eyes reported was happening was sufficient to fool the brain into believing that the phantom fist had been unclenched and thus the phantom limb pain was eliminated. I believe that Ramachandran reported excellent success with this ingenious medical hack.