Brain plasticity is used to treat phantom pain


	Brain plasticity is used to treat phantom pain

balthazarus

9-9-2008 3:41 PM

740 views

tags:

brain

balthazarus says:

The brain, uncharted yet in its ways to be shaped, much more to come....

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<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/1491fc35-2ab0-4fc6-99bf-49d887a17f77/BD381D8F-4C99-4FA1-B4A0-00D1EC573954/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=phantom-limb-cure-retrain-brain" href="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=phantom-limb-cure-retrain-brain" style="font-size: 11px;">www.sciam.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=phantom-limb-cure-retrain-brain"><H1>Phantom Limb Cure: Retraining the Brain</H1></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=phantom-limb-cure-retrain-brain"><div align="center"><img src="http://content9.clipmarks.com/blog_cache/www.sciam.com/img/7E9BC30A-4257-4BFB-9AE7-B5AF7E4A665C" alt="" /></div></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=phantom-limb-cure-retrain-brain">how our body feels—the awareness we have of our physical self—is <A 
href="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-phantom-hand">constructed by the 
brain</A>. It depends on the maps of the body that are held within our brain and 
emerges as a conscious output.</blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=phantom-limb-cure-retrain-brain"><A href="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-mirror-cure">phantom limb 
pain</A>, which involves feeling pain in a limb after it has been amputated, the 
altered maps may in fact contribute to the pain. One way to treat such pain is 
by directly training the brain to <A 
href="http://www.biology.usu.edu/courses/biol5100/Articles2007/Phantom%20limb%20p%20ain.pdf">correct 
the distorted maps</A>. </blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=phantom-limb-cure-retrain-brain">Another way to treat such pains is by instructing the patient to imagine making 
<A href="http://neurology.org/cgi/content/abstract/67/12/2129">certain 
movements</A> with the phantom limb. Although we don’t know how such motor 
imagery works in the brain, one possibility is that it, too, corrects the 
distorted maps.<BR><BR></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=phantom-limb-cure-retrain-brain">Simply thinking about body parts activates their virtual counterpart—one can’t 
feel one’s body without using neurons that represent it.</blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=phantom-limb-cure-retrain-brain">The study also corroborates a growing literature on the lability of the human 
brain</blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/BD381D8F-4C99-4FA1-B4A0-00D1EC573954/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content6.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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