Researchers Identify Phantom Limb Brain Activity

mmmscience writes "Researchers in Switzerland think they had identified the regions of the brain responsible for creating phantom limbs and the senses that go along with them. Scientists studied a stroke victim who claimed that the phantom limb of her now-paralyzed left arm could do a number of things a normal limb could do, including 'scratch an itch on her head, with an actual sense of relief.'"

Comments

bloggers aren't jouros

[backwardMechanic]

Vacuous lack of information? What's this 'scientists in Switzerland' rubbish? We may not be the biggest country, but it would be polite to say which scientists, even where. For anyone that cares, the study was led by Asaid Khateb, a neuropsychologist at Geneva University Hospitals. Published in the Annals of Nuerology, abstract here: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122269076/abstract

Re:A serious question

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, we do.

I'm just coming up to 3 years post-op. I no-longer get a phantom penis when awake, but I sometimes have something I call "the hermaphrodite dream", where I have both a penis and vagina. The first few times, it messed with my head a bit, but now I'm kinda OK with it, and it only happens once or twice a year.

for a horrifying read on phantom itching:

[circletimessquare]

consider this new yorker piece:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/30/080630fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all

basically, this poor woman's condition has bolstered neurologists rethinking of the itch sensation as something completely unrelated to pain. she had an incredibly rare "phantom itch". how disabling was it? she scratched THROUGH HER SKULL, until she was scratching brain matter

she survived, in a debilitated condition, but she did better than her roommate, who, with a similar phantom itch, scratched through to his carotid, and killed himself

read, for an especially horrifying insight into what its like to live with a phantom itch:

"But I was desperate," M. told me. She let them operate on her, slicing the supraorbital nerve above the right eye. When she woke up, a whole section of her forehead was numb--and the itching was gone. A few weeks later, however, it came back, in an even wider expanse than before. The doctors tried pain medications, more psychiatric medications, more local anesthetic. But the only thing that kept M. from tearing her skin and skull open again, the doctors found, was to put a foam football helmet on her head and bind her wrists to the bedrails at night.

She spent the next two years committed to a locked medical ward in a rehabilitation hospital--because, although she was not mentally ill, she was considered a danger to herself. Eventually, the staff worked out a solution that did not require binding her to the bedrails. Along with the football helmet, she had to wear white mitts that were secured around her wrists by surgical tape. "Every bedtime, it looked like they were dressing me up for Halloween--me and the guy next to me," she told me.

"The guy next to you?" I asked. He had had shingles on his neck, she explained, and also developed a persistent itch. "Every night, they would wrap up his hands and wrap up mine." She spoke more softly now. "But I heard he ended up dying from it, because he scratched into his carotid artery."

I met M. seven years after she'd been discharged from the rehabilitation hospital. She is forty-eight now. She lives in a three-room apartment, with a crucifix and a bust of Jesus on the wall and the low yellow light of table lamps strung with beads over their shades. Stacked in a wicker basket next to her coffee table were Rick Warren's "The Purpose Driven Life," People, and the latest issue of Neurology Now, a magazine for patients. Together, they summed up her struggles, for she is still fighting the meaninglessness, the isolation, and the physiology of her predicament.

She met me at the door in a wheelchair; the injury to her brain had left her partially paralyzed on the left side of her body. She remains estranged from her children. She has not, however, relapsed into drinking or drugs. Her H.I.V. remains under control. Although the itch on her scalp and forehead persists, she has gradually learned to protect herself. She trims her nails short. She finds ways to distract herself. If she must scratch, she tries to rub gently instead. And, if that isn't enough, she uses a soft toothbrush or a rolled-up terry cloth. "I don't use anything sharp," she said. The two years that she spent bound up in the hospital seemed to have broken the nighttime scratching. At home, she found that she didn't need to wear the helmet and gloves anymore.