Phantom Limb Pain
Phantom limb pain (PLP) is a complex phenomenon that includes a wide variety of symptoms ranging from tingling and itching to burning and aching. During the past twenty years researchers have advanced a number of theories to explain phantom limb pain. Three of the most prominent are: 1) maladaptive changes in the primary sensory cortex after amputation (maladaptive plasticity), 2) a conflict between the signals received from the amputated limb (proprioception) and the information provided by vision that serves to send motor commands to the missing limb, 3) vivid limb position memories that emerge after amputation.
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Famous quotes containing the words phantom, limb and/or pain:
“She was a phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely apparition, sent
To be a moment’s ornament;”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
“should some limb of the devil
Destroy the view by cutting down an ash
That shades the road, or setting up a cottage
Planned in a government office, shorten his life,
Manacle his soul upon the Red Sea bottom.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“On the day we filmed the scene, a bee stung me. I screamed and cried so much they called a doctor, and my father said, “It can’t hurt that badly!” But it wasn’t the pain that upset me, it was the thought that I mightn’t be in the film. Already the little professional.”
—Natasha Richardson (b. 1963)