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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.'"
What explains phantom brain slashdot moderation?
Can you masturbate with a phantom limb?
In Larry Niven's Gil "The Arm" Hamilton stories (collected in Flatlander ), the protagonist lost his arm in an accident, but found that without the physical arm he had developed telekinesis with the remaining phantom hand feeling. This persisted after he got a new arm transplanted, so he had in effect three arms. Now, one can discount Niven's interest in the paranormal, peculiar for a writer usually lauded for the believable science of his stories. But I'd be interested to know if in reality the feeling of a phantom limb would persist even after a new prosthetic or even human transplant were added.
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
It's been long suspected in sports training that mentally practicing a skill is often as useful and productive as doing the real thing. fMRI supports this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_Practice_of_Action The surprising thing to me is that she actually got relief from phantom-ly scratching herself. I suspect this is some placebo effect. Or related to why you can't tickle yourself.
Now that they've found it, I'd like to see if they could - though I understand such specific manipulation is no doubt a long way off - work on a way to stimulate the area artificially. The ability to build controllable phantom limbs could be of great use for interacting with virtual realities. Imagine, while still having full control of your senses and limbs, being able to walk around a second entirely separate world with an entirely separate body; a lucid, computer-assisted daydream, essentially.
Do male to female transexuals get phantom erections after the operation?
Watch this guy explain it and be amazed. The phantom Limb part comes in at around half way if I remember correctly. This was filmed in 2007 so ya old news. Vilayanur Ramachandran: A journey to the center of your mind http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/184
Possibly. But from the post's description, I suspect what they've actually identified is the psychic nut-job region of the brain.
Finally reaches the human brain...
I have to wonder, if there is a large body of science behind paranormal events, why don't the scientists cash in on the Randi Million Dollar challenge (or any of the several dozen smaller ones that are out there, if Randis requirements are too hard)?
Too hard? It's got nothing to do with 'hard'. It has to do with Randi being a dick who will do anything in his power to not know what he doesn't want to know. The man has the thundering ego of a. . , well, a stage magician whose reputation and sense of self-worth are pinned directly to his being Right. Quite simply, he is not capable of being wrong, and therefore he will not be, regardless of what reality has to say about it. Read through some of the case studies of his 'challenge'. The man is loud, rude and biased, about as unscientific as any religious pundit. If you've ever dealt with somebody like that personally, and you probably have, then you'd know that such a 'challenge' is not real, but rather is presented entirely to give the impression of reasonableness, thus giving one the illusory basis for righteous denial of anything which offends and frightens them. It functions, I suspect, from the same part of the brain as extends the Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly form of 'journalistic integrity'.
Any challenger or prize-offerer is going to hold a similar profile. If they truly wanted to Know, then they would. It's not that difficult to go and find and experience this stuff. --Thus, the larger part of the issue is that such 'challenges' make the presumption that truth is owed to the rest of the world. It is not. It is available, but very few actually want Truth. To shove a truth down somebody's throat when they do not want it, is a violation of Free Will.
In short, if you want to know, go look; nobody is going to go to the trouble of providing anything for you if you can't be bothered to invest the energy to put in the requisite work through exploring. If you don't want to know, then carry on as you are. It's really that simple. --The only real difficulty is that those who do not want to know also feel the need to diminish and prevent those who DO want to know. If you don't want something to be there, then you have to deal somehow with those who are not satisfied to consume the same lies you are satisfied with.
Thus, we get nonsense like the false, 'Randi Challenge'. Pre-fab ammunition available for easy launch from the coward's armchair. Of course, it only works if you don't consider it too deeply, but that's easy for those hiding from truth. Self-deception is a skill improved over time.
-FL
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:
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm not entirely sure what you are rambling on about, but, the guy and his rules seem pretty simple to me: Come in and prove you can do whatever it is you claim you can do, under our conditions, those conditions also being fairly straight forward. No cheating.
So, aside from your word, which is nothing short of one big "Citation Needed", I'm going to see "1 (one) million dollars, verified in a bank account, just waiting to be had", along with a sensible set of rules that should be absolutely no problem at all for anyone having a talent of this kind, and conclude that you are either scorned because you failed it, or just incapable of understanding others might be a tad cynical of those who come with extraordinary claims.
In short, if you want to know, go look; nobody is going to go to the trouble of providing anything for you if you can't be bothered to invest the energy to put in the requisite work through exploring. If you don't want to know, then carry on as you are.
I'm one of those people who really, really wants magic to be real. Sadly, I'm not an idiot, and so I can't just wish upon a star and then tell myself it worked - I have to actually try and test it. Every single time I've found something that looks like it *might* be working, any remotely rigorous testing shows it's just imagination and confirmation bias.
Hell, at one stage my Dad was insisting he could feel peoples' auras by waving his hands around. This went on for months until I finally stood in front of him, made him close his eyes, and then told him to show me exactly where my aura was, by feel. He'd pretty confidently found it by a minute later, by which time I was on the other side of the room.
If anyone could do anything remotely genuine in the paranormal sense then solving a trivial problem like "read what's in the envelope in my pocket" would net them an easy million. I can't see a single non-bullshit reason not to claim such a prize... if you genuinely can.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
So, aside from your word, which is nothing short of one big "Citation Needed", I'm going to see "1 (one) million dollars, verified in a bank account, just waiting to be had", along with a sensible set of rules that should be absolutely no problem at all for anyone having a talent of this kind, and conclude that you are either scorned because you failed it, or just incapable of understanding others might be a tad cynical of those who come with extraordinary claims.
And this is exactly how I felt about things as well until I went to explore the claims and counter-claims surrounding Randi.
Clearly, you have not done this. Why?
--That's a rhetorical "Why?" which I answered in my previous post. Citations are useful and they are out certainly available, but you are not asking for one; you are challenging with a chin-jutting attitude. What does this say about what you really want?
What do I 'win' by convincing you, other than perhaps your respect and that of society's in general? The thing is, I no longer crave society's respect (and certainly not yours) due to the work I have done in re-writing the programming in my own mind. --The combative "Jury Box" system of truth discernment is a feature of our world which has been sold to us through television with the broad suggestion that it can and should be applied in all instances including the scientific forum, but this is not the case. Here's an interesting fact: Many of the forces which exist beyond the walls of 'official culture' have to do with one's state of consciousness, and can be affected and indeed blocked through an application of intent and strong will. If you don't want to see something, then in a surprising number of cases, it is entirely possible to trick yourself into not seeing it. You can even prevent others from seeing. There are a vast number of phenomenon like this.
As for the win/lose method of knowledge distribution. . .
I've already 'won' by increasing my knowledge. Yow win nothing by fortifying ignorance. But we are taught that "Winning = Not Getting the Ego Bruised". "Being Wrong" has been attached with a powerful negative emotional cost hammered into us all through an education system which pitted children against one another through the tactic of age segregation. Age segregation makes it so that leaders are not readily found within groups, thus increasing the competition among children to very high levels while never allowing for a clear 'winner'. One result is that of, "Jocks v.s. Geeks". --The result being a shell-shocked geek community which grows into adulthood with deeply set baggage wrt losing face in any kind of contest. Thus the attaining of knowledge comes in at a distant second to being Right At All Cost. (And when I say, "Right" I do not mean, "Factually Correct". I mean "In line with the official version".) --The age segregation and the combat it forces children to undergo makes knowledge given by authority figures (like the TV) the only safe way of accumulating data because the data given is not accompanied by a sense of guilt or defeat in not previously knowing, but rather a warm-fuzzy feeling. So if you can control the media, and you also control the knowledge stream because the population will police itself, allowing no new knowledge to arise from its peers. The only thing geeks are allowed to say is simply a repetition of what TV's and various other globally recognized media authority figures have stated as being 'true'.
-FL
Listen, feel free to believe in anything you like. I'm not stopping you in any way. I'm not even demanding you to prove your beliefs true. The original poster started talking about science, however, and that's when I do start asking for results reproduced by independent parties.
The poster I was responding to brought James Randi into the equation. James Randi is not a man of science.
I'm as fascinated by the scientific method as you are, but I do think it is important to distinguish between real science and 'cult of science'. There are very few scientists out there who are not corrupted by discriminatory and prejudicial belief systems. Further, science is severely limited in the exploration of certain phenomena due to the nature of consciousness.
Consider: If a force exists which is capable of being neutralized through the unconscious intent and will of observers who do not want to see it, then how do you measure it? I've never seen an experiment performed which takes this question into account.
Yes, it sounds as silly as, "I'm invisible, but only when nobody is looking," but it is still an entirely valid question. Science will be limited until it knows how to answer this.
-FL
I'll be able to do that when you can prove that you, 'Dream'.
Well done, you've shown that there exist some things that are unfalsifiable.
Yes, if we lived in a world where only some people dreamed, it would be hard to verify that. We could however read their brain patterns, note their eye movements, see how it matches up with their experiences. We can conduct experiments such as playing sounds when they sleep and seeing if they can recall them in their dreams. It's called evidence - just as we infer that some animals likely dream, even though we can't ask them.
Of course, you'll quibble we can't know 100% what their experiences of dreaming are like. Well, so what - it's unfalsifiable anyway. The problem is that claims of the paranormal often aren't unfalsifiable. You claim that people can read people's minds, that they can see the future, that ghosts do exist. Whether these are true or not are testable, in a way that what people experience dreams (a similar example would be "Prove that you see red the same as I do"). Yet despite this, they never pass such tests - and moreover, those who claim to have such powers do all they can to weasel out of being tested.
If we had a "dream test" that could test people were dreaming, I would expect people who claimed dreams exist to show it with that test. We do have tests for various paranormal claims - so why not undergo them? If you want to believe that dreams don't exist, if that makes you happy, that's up to you, but the lack of a dream test is not an excuse not to undergo the tests that do exist.
This is just a variation of the tired "But you can't prove love exists!" response from theists to atheists. Well, how about you prove that you're not an antelope? If you can't, it's okay for me to claim that you are?
The answer doesn't come from demanding the world dance for you, but by getting out there and exploring beyond the walls of official culture.
I don't expect anyone to dance. But if someone makes outlandish claims such as "I've got three heads", when I offer to test that, and they refuse, it's reasonable for me to be suspicious. People who dream have been happy to subject themselves to scientific testing, so your attack against them is unfounded.