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bbaum's picture

After Thursday’s

After Thursday’s discussion on phantom limb pain I startedto think about other circumstances when there is loss of feeling in limbs. Themost common circumstance when this occurs in after a stroke when people maypermanently or temporarily loose feeling or control over certain limbs or bodyparts. I wanted to know if a temporary loss of sensation could lead to aphenomenon that has the same characteristics as phantom limb pain, even if theloss of limb was not permanent. I found a journal article that looked at theexperience of anosognosia and other disorders that involve abnormal attitudestowards or perceptions of the affected limb in patients that have recentlyexperienced strokes with damage to the right side of the brain. The researchersfound that about 92% of the stoke patients experienced some type of “disturbedsensation of limb ownership,” and that the patients that did have theseexperiences tended to have specific damage in the right posterior insula. Ihave been unable to determine what the role of this specific box is, but itseems that it is involved in own sense of limb ownership. It would make sensethat if this specific area were damaged, the individual would be more likely tohave a disorder such as anosognosia. I also looked at an article that looked atpatients with both right side and left side damage, and found that there was asignificant increase in anosognosia like symptoms in patients that had rightside brain damage. I was wondering if there was any correlation between theincidence of phantom limb pain and on which side the patient lost the limb. Iwould predict that because the part of the brain responsible for limb ownershipis located on the right side of the brain, patients that have lost a limb onthe left side of their body would experience more phantom pain. 

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