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Phantom Limb Pain
| Article
# : |
22683 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
11 / 2002 |
171 Words |
| Author
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Norbert R. Myslinski
Norbert R. Myslinski is associate professor of neuroscience at
the University of Maryland. He is also director of the
International Brain Bee and Maryland Brain Awareness Week. |
Many amputees live in the worst of all possible worlds. While being deprived of the use of their real limb, they experience excruciating pain in their phantom limb. One example is a 55-year-old manual laborer whose entire right arm was amputated as a result of a work accident. He could feel the presence of a phantom limb only in the lower arm and hand, with a gap between the stump and the elbow.
Whenever he walked, he would feel it swinging back and forth in synchrony with his left leg. More than once, while walking down a flight of stairs, he instinctively reached out to grab the handrail with his phantom arm, only to find himself lying on the landing below. Sometimes he would feel his arm telescope into the stump, with only the hand and wrist protruding from his body. He could voluntarily move the phantom limb, but it required considerable effort. His pain throbbed across the back of his hand and increased when he lay on his right side at
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