Redefining self, phantom self
People with phantom limbs learn physically impossible body tricks
Phantoms take many forms — headless horseman, ghost ships, murdered fathers — and they can even reach out and grab the living: many people who have had an arm or leg amputated feel the limb is still present. The phantom pain that often accompanies these limbs has been successfully treated by using visual feedback from mirrors to trick the brain. Now similar instances of mind over non-matter have been achieved without external help — amputees have learned to mentally manipulate their phantom limbs into anatomically impossible configurations through thinking alone, scientists report October 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“It is very surprising that anybody — amputees or not — can learn impossible movements just by thinking about it,” comments neuroscientist Henrik Ehrsson of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.
Treatment of people with phantom limb pain usually requires starting a new conversation between the brain and the environment, typically accomplished through visual feedback, Ehrsson says.
The work suggests that people with a distorted body image — such as those with anorexia — may be able to alter their self-image by imagining a change to the body, says Lorimer Moseley of the Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute in Randwick, Australia. And those getting neural reconstructive surgery may be able to practice using their new body parts by simply imagining their use, says Moseley, who coauthored the work with colleague Peter Brugger of the University Hospital Zurich.