Phantom Limb Syndrome

Words: 635
Pages: 3
Open Document
Dr. Ramachandran describes three specific types of syndromes dealing with the brain in his talk video. Capgras syndrome is known as a delusional misidentification of a person that was once easily recognized. Phantom limb syndrome occurs when a person’s arm or leg is amputated and the person still feels pain in the limb. Synesthesia occurs when the simulation of one sensory pathway leads to the second pathway involuntarily. All three of these syndromes include the brain and certain nerves that have either been severed or wired differently. Capgras syndrome includes the temporal, frontal, and parietal lobes that constitute the brain. Capgras syndrome can occur when there is damage to the fusiform gyrus, which is also known as the face area …show more content…
Once the arm is amputated the patient may still be able to feel pain throughout the amputation. “This is because the brain continues to receive messages from nerves that originally carried impulses from the missing limb” (Scheinberg). Dr. Ramachandran invented a method for patients to get rid of their pain in their amputated arm. This type of method is known as the mirror box. The mirror box consists of two separate holes and two mirrors at the end of the box so the patient can look at their regular hand while it is moving. While the patient is moving their good hand, artificial visual feedback allows the patient to also move their amputated arm releasing the pain. Phantom limb involves an actual body whereas synesthesia occurs through the fusiform gyrus of the …show more content…
“Synesthesia is a condition in which stimulation [of the] cognitive stream involuntarily, or automatically, leads to internal or external experiences in a second unstimulated sensory or cognitive system” (Synesthesia & Savant Syndrome). This statement means that there has been cross wiring of the fusiform gyrus between colors and other things such as numbers or tones. Synesthesia eight times more common in artists, poets, and novelists because of metaphorical thinking. One research method that has been out ruled is that the people who have synesthesia are just crazy. This is not so because synesthesia occurs in families and is caused by a gene that has been
Show More

Related Documents: Phantom Limb Syndrome

Phantom Limb Syndrome

1. What is the explanation given for phantom limb syndrome? The theory is that there is a complete map of the surface of the body inside the brain and that one entire side of the body is mapped to the opposite side. Part of one side of the body is represented on the other side of the brain, along a vertical strip of cortex called the somatosensory cortex. Basically, when a limb is amputated the corresponding part of the brain no longer gets any input and it wants new sensory input. There is a huge…

Words 550 - Pages 3

Perception In Oliver Sacks The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat

A neurological disorder known as Phantom limb syndrome which is when there is a sensation from the area of an amputated limb due to the central and peripheral nerves system changes due to the injury as well as from some damage of nerves due to the injury (Phantom Limb, Gales). In one of the stories called `Phantoms` (66-70) deals with a sailor who had cut off his finger. For the next forty years the sailor would continue to feel his phantom finger and would have feelings that it would…

Words 740 - Pages 3

Phantom Limb

Phantom Limb Charlie Glaser The Ohio State University Psychology 3310 Proprioception is the sense of the relative position of a body part. Proprioceptors are located in the striated muscle and joints though out the body. The term was coined as early as 1557 by Julius Caesar Scalinger when studying the position movement of locomotion, but was redefined by Henry Charlton Bastian (1880) and the term kineaesthesia arose. Bastian studied the afferent pathway between the brain and the tendons…

Words 2540 - Pages 11

ap dbq Essay example

mind as his condition degenerated. The Lost Mariner We learn from Jimmie that drinking, especially heavy drinking, really affects our bodies, especially later in our lives. His renegade amnesia was caused by Korsakov’s Syndrome which resulted from the patient’s heavy drinking after he left the navy. I found that his inability to recall the time he spent after 1945 very interesting, and that he could remember everything from his height of glory in the navy vividly, yet had…

Words 893 - Pages 4

Medicine During The Civil War Essay

Of these soldiers, over 30,000 resulted in amputations! Many of these amputations were unnecessary, the surgeons just didn’t know any better. You could have a limb amputated because of gunshot, infections, fractured or broken bones, or other injuries. After an amputation, many complications could arise, like infection, phantom limb syndrome, PTSD, etc. The doctors that performed amputations saved many lives, but also ruined…

Words 402 - Pages 2

Blindness In Malcolm Gladwell's The Power Of Context

forgetting the faces of his parents and the faces of his loved ones and sometimes visualizing men and women without heads or fingers, his inner vision spontaneously started as a sensation of streaming radiance for similar reasons as the medical syndrome of phantom limb. Lusseyran was soon to realize that he was in possession of not just a luminosity but a great visual imagery. He wrote in his memoir that “names, figures, and objects in general did not appear on my screen without shape, nor just in black…

Words 1660 - Pages 7