No, really, we’re not. Until you find a study that we can look at seriously with data, we’re just talking about supposition. Besides that fact that it violates our understanding of how the world works, it’s not supported by any evidence and countered by a lot of evidence.
Ah sorry, wrong LeFanu. I only knew Sheridan, whose J. apparently stands for Joseph, not James…
In any case, it seems likely that the author of the article referred to by the OP read some study such as this one, in which tactile sensation is evoked in the phantom limb through stimulation of the stump, and got some things wrong, or accidentally misrepresented them in a confusing manner – for instance, there is talk of ‘distal’ and ‘proximal’ test sites, which could be misunderstood as referring to the closeness of the stimulus to the stump, giving the impression of stimuli being applied ‘in empty space’, i.e. to the phantom limb itself.
The only effect applying a “stimulus” to empty space would have is a placebo effect - which, if it works, might be a viable “trick” to deal with the problems associated with phantom limbs, but it certainly would require the person to be aware of what is happening and it’s not magic. It certainly doesn’t involve mysterious “energy fields” or whatever.
Thanks for posting this link.
In reading it, I was/am similarly confused as to exactly what they were doing in this study.
I think that what they were doing was applying a stimulus to the existing physical stump, and then asking the subject if he/she felt any corresponding sensation in the phantom stump.
However, the text is sufficiently confusing that the experiment could just as easily be interpreted as their having applied stimulus to the non existent phantom stump, and asking the subject if they felt any sensation.
Given this ambiguity in this study, it may be that the studies referred to in the newspaper article to which I originally referred are similarly ambiguous.
Possibly what happened was that the journalist who wrote the article interpreted the studies that he/she read to mean that the stimulus was applied to the phantom limb.
A very good example of the need for clarity in reporting research!
You cannot apply a stimulus to a phantom limb. Not ragging on you guys, but these people are morons.
I have a stimulus applied to my stump every morning when I put on my prosthesis.
Any one who believes in the above-mentioned studies might as well believe in ghosts and dowsing.
BTW, “stump” is not PC these days. :rolleyes: The proper term is “residual limb”.
So far, nobody has said that they believe in anything.
To this point, we have a newspaper article in which certain assertions were made. From the very first post we have been trying to either verify, or refute, those assertions.
Once we have done so, or not, then we start talking about what we believe, or don’t believe.
From the link provided above, we can see how a study into the phenomenon can be reported so badly that its results can be interpreted to mean any number of things.
From this we can infer that the newspaper article in question may be based on a similar misinterpretation.
My apologies for my non PC terminology; while I don’t give crap what is, or is not, PC, I do apologize if I offended you. It was entirely unintentional.
I’ve not had a limb amputated, but I had my right kidney removed a few years ago, and have suffered phantom kidney pain. It’s gotten less frequent, but for the first year, I’d wake up in the middle of the night with such horrible pain that I was sure I had a stone! Yep, a kidney stone from a kidney I no longer had. . .:smack: Fortunately, my urologist was well-versed in dealing with this, and had found that if you deal with the pain exactly the way you would deal with it if the organ were still there, it helps. So, Darvocet, naproxen sodium, and ibuprofen.
I have RLS, too, but it usually manifests as my ankle spasming so violently that it’s painful. It doesn’t happen often, and is definitely more common when my feet get cold, and my doc treats it with low doses of Xanax.
Grateful-UnDead, you should check out V.S. Ramachandran’s book Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind. He’s a neurologist who has done a lot of work on phantom pain and where it arises from. It’s a fascinating book – much more interesting than Sheldrake or Le Fanu’s work, in my opinion.
Thanks for the recommendation; I have just placed an order for this at Amazon; I also ordered a copy of “The Brain that changes itself”
Looks like a lot of Fall reading; it will be interesting to find out what all the fuss is about with regard to Sheldrake and LeFanu; and how what they have to say compares to the others.