

The Mirror Man: Treating Phantom Limb Pain With a Simple Technology - curtis
http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/mirror-man-treating-phantom-limb-pain-simple-technology-87450/

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pbhjpbhj
> _In 2008, Stephen was working as a property manager in south Baja, Mexico,
> when he had a particularly agonizing bout of phantom pain. “I was not
> presentable for 72 hours,” he says. He was aware of mirror therapy from
> having looked online for treatments, and he decided to give it a try. He got
> into his truck and drove two-and-a-half hours to the nearest Home Depot to
> buy a mirror. He tried it right there in the parking lot, and in five
> minutes the pain was gone._

> _Stephen used the mirror for two weeks, then stopped because the pain had
> not returned. About a year and a half later, he felt the pain again, and
> this time he stayed the course for the full five weeks. He hasn’t had
> phantom pain for over four years. “It’s gone now,” he says. “It’s gone
> because I treated myself with a mirror.”_

The patient arranges a mirror to show a healthy limb as if it were the
phantom. They can then "move" the phantom limb [by actually moving the
surviving healthy limb].

I recall reading of experiments with healthy subjects where an arrangement
convinced them that a model was their limb, the limb was injured and they felt
pain - something along those lines, seems similar to how this works.

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snarfy
Ramachandran's ted talk:

[http://www.ted.com/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind](http://www.ted.com/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind)

