Our brains  

Posted by Feral Beast in , ,

Hello.

I'm going to talk about a story that's true that I saw on the Discovery channel a few months ago, and it's about a man that had a motorbike crash and had to have his arm chopped off 'coz it was crushed.
But the thing is his hand was holding onto the handle bars and his fingers were digging into his hand.

Even though his arm was dead, he still wanted it on his body.
After a year, he then changed his mind and had it chopped off.
After it was chopped off he could still feel the pain of the fingers digging into his hand.
These are called phantom pains that people feel even after they've had an arm or leg chopped off.

For about a year or so he could still feel it, until he went to a doctor and had some tests done on him.
After a few tests the doctor bought a box and a mirror, when the man came into his office the doctor told the man to put his one arm in, and to make a fist and then to undo the fist and do it twice more.

After that the pain had stopped.
No one really knows why it worked, except it has something to do with the way our brains map our body parts and it tricked the brain into seeing the chopped off arm opening the fist and stopping the pain.
The reason the brain thinks it was the chopped off arm is because the man saw it through the mirror which reversed everything.

And thats the end of the story, and it was true.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 2, 2008 at 1:03 PM and is filed under , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments feed .

3 comments

Anonymous  

Wow, wasn't that a clever doctor! And isn't it amazing how our brains work? Have you ever read the book, 'The man who mistook his wife for a hat'? It's all about people with brain injuries and what their experiences tell us about how the brain works. Just mind boggling, so to speak.

June 2, 2008 at 3:58 PM

On the other hand (so to speak) perhaps it was his arm that was really alive and his brain was the phantom...

June 3, 2008 at 2:07 AM

No, I haven't read it, but I'll try to get it.

LOL.

June 3, 2008 at 1:59 PM

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