Phantom Limb Pain, Cortical Reorganization and the Therapeutic Effect of Mental Imagery
by mo on Tuesday, April 12, 2011
This was a case study of a therapy to treat phantom limb pain – a combination of ‘body-scan’ exercises and imagining movement of and sensation in the phantom limb.
Results: "The body-scan facilitated relaxation and imagery. In particular recruits learned to concentrate on sensations from each area of the body consecutively, including the phantom arm and hand. Once a state of relaxation was achieved the recruit was encouraged to imagine comfortable and thorough movement and sensation in the phantom limb. More specifically recruits were encouraged to focus on sensation from each part of the phantom, for example, imagining the sensation of the arm resting against the couch, whether the limb felt warm of cool, the position of each finger. Next, they were invited to imagine comfortable and thorough movement and sensation in the phantom limb, such that they could ‘stretch away the pain’, and finally to ‘allow the fingers, hand and arm to rest in a comfortable position’" (Kelly, Lloy, MacIver, Nurmikko and Roberts 2008, p. 2183).
What this article pointed out to me is that by practice and repetition, one's awareness of a singular body part becomes more and more apparent – usually you think of the body as a whole. In this way, perhaps the final design solution involves some sort of manipulation by which the user or viewer is offered acute awareness of a particular body part, which in turn obliges them to reconsider preconceptions about the body as an unchanging whole.
Reference: Kelly, N., Lloyd, D. M., MacIver, K., Nurmikko, T., Roberts, N. 2008, “Phantom Limb Pain, Cortical Reorganization and the Thereapeutic Effect of Mental Imagery”, Pain, vol. 131, pp. 2181-2191.
