Researchers Identify Phantom Limb Brain Activity 165
mmmscience writes "Researchers in Switzerland think they had identified the regions of the brain responsible for creating phantom limbs and the senses that go along with them. Scientists studied a stroke victim who claimed that the phantom limb of her now-paralyzed left arm could do a number of things a normal limb could do, including 'scratch an itch on her head, with an actual sense of relief.'"
Yes but... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Yes but... (Score:4, Funny)
Dunno about that, but I suspect phantom limbs may explain "first post". Or maybe phantom brain explains that better.
But what Slashdotters really need to know... (Score:5, Funny)
Can you masturbate with a phantom limb?
Re:But what Slashdotters really need to know... (Score:5, Funny)
If you use the left part of your brain, it feels like someone else is doing it.
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Moties would never have the equivalent of
Re:But what Slashdotters really need to know... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:But what Slashdotters really need to know... (Score:5, Interesting)
Anything that you have physically experienced once can be replicated with enough focus and mental dedication.
For lay people, the number of times they engaged in the activity with the now absent limb should impact the ability to recreate the sensations assuming they use an entry-level, single-instance recursion method for manifestation. This method would involve identifying one remembered masturbatory experience, and then recursing on the memory - initially focusing on one aspect of sense memory (ie: olfactory, visual, etc..), and adding sense detail with each iteration.
It should be noted that persons not already suffering from socialization issues should avoid cultivating the ability to completely self-satisfy, as this can lead to all sorts of socialization issues.
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Everything is fantasy when you are dealing with memories, but I take your point. Here is a brief explanation of the mechanism for single-instance recursion - it is not for everyone.
Single-instance recursion works for creating the orgasm trigger in individuals with a large number of instances to draw from because reconstructive recursion upon a single memory results in a super-realistic composite memory - the formation and subsequent experience of which can result in both sexual climax without physical stim
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Can you masturbate with a phantom limb?
Yes, and you can type stupid replies with them, as well!
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Can you masturbate with a phantom limb?
Dunno, but apparently some girls [gadgetmadness.com] can do some pretty interesting things with one.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Like Gil "The Arm" (Score:5, Funny)
Or like -- The Phantom Limb!
"He wears a lot of purple for a white guy. ..."
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Go Team Venture!
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"That chode she's with? That's Phantom Limb. In college he was a scrawny little wuss. In a desperate attempt to be cooler than guys like me, he had his 12 year old roommate create a machine that speeds up the muscle building process. The machine worked so well that every molecule in his extremities was accelerated beyond the speed of light. There were two side effects. One! He could mess up a guy just by touching him. And two! He became a humorless dick!"
Re:Like Gil "The Arm" (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd guess no. I believe it was V.S. Ramachandran who demonstrated that he could fool the brain into getting rid of phantom limb pain by using mirrors so that the visual system interpreted the remaining limb as being the missing limb (which leads into questions about blind people and phantom limbs, for which I don't have the answer and am too lazy to look it up). If one had an appendage that looked like an arm doing the things the brain was commanding the arm to do(and possibly requiring some tactile feedback as well), the brain would probably just interpret that appendage as the missing limb instead of creating a representation as a 3d arm.
Or I could be totally wrong. Wouldn't be the first time.
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if you want to talk about the paranormal (Score:2)
and phantom limbs, i have a theory about ghosts:
social contact is extremely important psychologically for human beings, especially in regard to close friends and family. we form social bonds with a small group of other humans who can finish our sentences and wordlessly engage in complex tasks with us. that our social connection with others in this small group can be said to be as strong and vital and deep and as complex and important for our survival as our psychological connection with our own hand or foot
Re:Like Gil "The Arm" (Score:4, Insightful)
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Two words: (Score:2)
Placebo effect.
Re:Like Gil "The Arm" (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to wonder, if there is a large body of science behind paranormal events, why don't the scientists cash in on the Randi Million Dollar challenge (or any of the several dozen smaller ones that are out there, if Randis requirements are too hard)? I can't believe that research grants in the field of paranormal studies are so easily available that the researchers just can't be bothered...
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Phantom limbs, despite the name, are not paranormal and we have a basic understanding of them. The parent had the right idea about Ramachandran's research--he used a visual illusion to cure phantom limb pain in subjects.
Phantom limbs exist because the body has a sense of positioning and actually existing. To illustrate this, sit on your leg until it "falls asleep" and try to walk around. Your pinched nerve will not report positioning correctly and you'll have an interesting time walking around. You migh
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Yeah, I know, but since he seemed to think "phantom limbs" referred to some paranormal claim I didn't want to get too technical for him.
Randi again. . ? Oh my! (Score:3, Insightful)
I have to wonder, if there is a large body of science behind paranormal events, why don't the scientists cash in on the Randi Million Dollar challenge (or any of the several dozen smaller ones that are out there, if Randis requirements are too hard)?
Too hard? It's got nothing to do with 'hard'. It has to do with Randi being a dick who will do anything in his power to not know what he doesn't want to know. The man has the thundering ego of a. . , well, a stage magician whose reputation and sense of self-w
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Re:Randi again. . ? Oh my! (Score:5, Interesting)
So, aside from your word, which is nothing short of one big "Citation Needed", I'm going to see "1 (one) million dollars, verified in a bank account, just waiting to be had", along with a sensible set of rules that should be absolutely no problem at all for anyone having a talent of this kind, and conclude that you are either scorned because you failed it, or just incapable of understanding others might be a tad cynical of those who come with extraordinary claims.
And this is exactly how I felt about things as well until I went to explore the claims and counter-claims surrounding Randi.
Clearly, you have not done this. Why?
--That's a rhetorical "Why?" which I answered in my previous post. Citations are useful and they are out certainly available, but you are not asking for one; you are challenging with a chin-jutting attitude. What does this say about what you really want?
What do I 'win' by convincing you, other than perhaps your respect and that of society's in general? The thing is, I no longer crave society's respect (and certainly not yours) due to the work I have done in re-writing the programming in my own mind. --The combative "Jury Box" system of truth discernment is a feature of our world which has been sold to us through television with the broad suggestion that it can and should be applied in all instances including the scientific forum, but this is not the case. Here's an interesting fact: Many of the forces which exist beyond the walls of 'official culture' have to do with one's state of consciousness, and can be affected and indeed blocked through an application of intent and strong will. If you don't want to see something, then in a surprising number of cases, it is entirely possible to trick yourself into not seeing it. You can even prevent others from seeing. There are a vast number of phenomenon like this.
As for the win/lose method of knowledge distribution. . .
I've already 'won' by increasing my knowledge. Yow win nothing by fortifying ignorance. But we are taught that "Winning = Not Getting the Ego Bruised". "Being Wrong" has been attached with a powerful negative emotional cost hammered into us all through an education system which pitted children against one another through the tactic of age segregation. Age segregation makes it so that leaders are not readily found within groups, thus increasing the competition among children to very high levels while never allowing for a clear 'winner'. One result is that of, "Jocks v.s. Geeks". --The result being a shell-shocked geek community which grows into adulthood with deeply set baggage wrt losing face in any kind of contest. Thus the attaining of knowledge comes in at a distant second to being Right At All Cost. (And when I say, "Right" I do not mean, "Factually Correct". I mean "In line with the official version".) --The age segregation and the combat it forces children to undergo makes knowledge given by authority figures (like the TV) the only safe way of accumulating data because the data given is not accompanied by a sense of guilt or defeat in not previously knowing, but rather a warm-fuzzy feeling. So if you can control the media, and you also control the knowledge stream because the population will police itself, allowing no new knowledge to arise from its peers. The only thing geeks are allowed to say is simply a repetition of what TV's and various other globally recognized media authority figures have stated as being 'true'.
-FL
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Like you, FL, I also used to be a hard nose skeptic - no, scratch that, not a skeptic, more like a "cynic"; skepticism is healthy, cynicism is what we're dealing with here though. Over my 46 years, certain life experiences taught me to be more accepting of the possibilities (and claims of others) while at the same time, I came to fully realize that science is not so black & white, cut and dried, and nowhere near complete. It's not that I'm "anti-scie
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But of course, you and other superstitious idiots with no evidence what so ever for your claims know better? Give me a fucking break.
See, this is why you are an idiot. No one claims that we know everything. But going from that to blindly believing in
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Here's a question for you along with some personal history to give you an idea of why I am asking it.
I have found myself increasingly believing that there is a huge swath of reality that the system of western science is either ignoring or is incapable of comprehending. This includes things like ESP, telekineses, the human energy field (aura), out of body experiences, and other things in the vein we tend to call "paranormal." This interest was sparked when, during college, I connected with a pastor of a ho
How do you get there from here. . ? (Score:2)
Hm.
I forget sometimes where I came from myself. --The world really is pretty locked down. I started out the son of an engineer and a big fan of science. Did the model rocket, and build your own radio thing as a kid. At a party many years later, somebody brought out a Chinese divination system based on an old game, and proceeded to do readings for people. It was unlike anything I'd ever chanced across before; all I'd seen of the esoteric was the newspaper horoscope section which I'd always found to be e
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over the next several years, I met at random people who were similarly tuned to this kind of stuff
Hah! I should have seen that one coming. I had forgotten that a friend of mine met a teacher that way.
Thank you for the response.
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So what you are saying is that Randi would be critical to what he was seeing, and look for natural explanations rather than resorting to bullshit pseudoscientific nonsense?
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Ego and Truth (Score:2)
Forget about Randi's challenge. Just prove scientifically something paranormal. Get a Nobel prize (or at least some recognition).
I'll be able to do that when you can prove that you, 'Dream'.
And in fact, I can. --But only for those who have figured out how to prove that they dream.
The answer doesn't come from demanding the world dance for you, but by getting out there and exploring beyond the walls of official culture. --And by letting go of the foolish desire for societal approval and "recognition" as you
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I'll be able to do that when you can prove that you, 'Dream'.
Well done, you've shown that there exist some things that are unfalsifiable.
Yes, if we lived in a world where only some people dreamed, it would be hard to verify that. We could however read their brain patterns, note their eye movements, see how it matches up with their experiences. We can conduct experiments such as playing sounds when they sleep and seeing if they can recall them in their dreams. It's called evidence - just as we infer that som
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It seems we have reached your definition of 'scientific'.
Well, that's cute, but it's not an insight, nor is it accurate. It's an avoidance technique which uses ridicule. Can you address the actual point?
-FL
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Like your avoidance technique when it comes to Randi's challenge?
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Saying 'you have to believe to be able to reproduce this experiment' is not science, ok?
No, it's not 'ok'. This isn't a school yard where, "repeat it louder," is considered a valid form of reasoning.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you didn't read my other response [slashdot.org] to you before you wrote this non-argument. I think that might have clarified the issue a little more. It's a hard concept to wrap one's head around.
-FL
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In short, if you want to know, go look; nobody is going to go to the trouble of providing anything for you if you can't be bothered to invest the energy to put in the requisite work through exploring. If you don't want to know, then carry on as you are.
I'm one of those people who really, really wants magic to be real. Sadly, I'm not an idiot, and so I can't just wish upon a star and then tell myself it worked - I have to actually try and test it. Every single time I've found something that looks like it *might* be working, any remotely rigorous testing shows it's just imagination and confirmation bias.
Hell, at one stage my Dad was insisting he could feel peoples' auras by waving his hands around. This went on for months until I finally stood in front of
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I can't see a single non-bullshit reason not to claim such a prize... if you genuinely can.
I don't believe in that stuff either, but... money isn't everything and someone who could do something like that probably feels enough like a freak already and perhaps isn't interested in the kind of attention they would get from claiming such a prize.
So, no, I don't believe in supernatural powers, but there are certainly reasons for not participating in those contests. And if I could do that kinda stuff, I would find another way to make money, that wouldn't result in the entire world chasing me for the res
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True that money isn't everything, but if I could move stuff around with my mind, or read the details off an envelope that's inside a safe, I wouldn't feel like a freak, I'd just feel FREAKIN' AWESOME! And I'd want to know how I did what I did, and how to teach other people to do it (if possible), and whether there was anything else I could do that I hadn't discovered yet. I'd want to know what my abilities meant for conventional science, and what new engineering techniques they would lead to. Hiding away a
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Pre-fab ammunition available for easy launch from the coward's armchair.
You're the coward. You're making grand claims of truth that the populous refuses to see, from your armchair, and then say you feel no need to back up your claims.
Of course, it only works if you don't consider it too deeply, but that's easy for those hiding from truth. Self-deception is a skill improved over time.
Are you hiding from the truth? What do you believe and why? I can pick a religion and believe it is true too, many people do, and then tell others I have found the "truth". Whatever helps you sleep better at night.
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So what? If you actually have something valid, you will show him being wrong. But you don't, because your delusion is supersitious nonsense with no evidence what so ever, and you know it.
How, specifically?
Ah, the typical braindead superstitious moron move. "You will only know if you want to know!" Brilliant! No need to do science. No sirree! Just pull the "you aren't worthy" card.
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Listen, feel free to believe in anything you like. I'm not stopping you in any way. I'm not even demanding you to prove your beliefs true. The original poster started talking about science, however, and that's when I do start asking for results reproduced by independent parties.
The poster I was responding to brought James Randi into the equation. James Randi is not a man of science.
I'm as fascinated by the scientific method as you are, but I do think it is important to distinguish between real science and
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You would need an impartial observer to make such an experiment.
Exactly. And to say that Randi isn't impartial is a massive understatement. The man is a giant ball of bullying, ill-reasoning ego and he has demonstrated this more than once. For this reason, he and his challenge can be crossed off the list of things to be taken seriously.
The interesting thing is that there have been experiments which have been conducted in a far more mature and scientific manner. The results of such experiments tend to be
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He doesn't have to be. All he needs to do is to set up experiments that are verifiable and falsifiable.
You have failed to demonstrate this. Instead, you have resorted to the old personal attack line, and superficial mumbo-jumbo about "we can't prove it, so it must be true" nonsense.
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He doesn't have to be. All he needs to do is to set up experiments that are verifiable and falsifiable.
Actually, I think you are mistaken in this. --Impartiality is a requirement of good science. This is why we perform double-blind tests; in an effort to combat our own proclivity in fooling ourselves; it is fascinating to me that even such attempts don't always take the full spectrum of possibility into account. In any case, it's a two-way street; the ability to affect results is possible for both the Tr
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Doesn't that, by definition, make them not paranormal? As in, normal?
But anyway, there's a large body of evidence that a woman who'd never, like, you know, "done it", could have a son who was able to synthesise ethanolic beverages directly from dihydrogen monoxide.
(For suitably small values of large)
bloggers aren't jouros (Score:5, Informative)
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You clearly know how hyperlinking works, so what are you complaining about? Or is the slashdot summary supposed to contain all information that might be interesting to anyone? TFA is pretty heavily linked to the sources... anyone who cares will find the study authors.
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Gotcha, sorry I was snarky.
But the bottom of the article does say "The study was led by Asaid Khateb of Geneva University Hospitals and was published in a recent issue of Annals of Neurology."
I think the links to press releases are because that site (examiner.com) seems to make it's money by funneling traffic to its clients, in this case apparently eurekalert.org. Just my guess :)
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But the abstract you cite is even more vacuous. It reference patients, particularly a 'non-deluded woman', without even telling us what country they are in.
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Is it ... "Anals of Neurology"...?
For a brain surgeon, you sure are an asshole.
Mind over matter (Score:1, Funny)
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Possibly. But from the post's description, I suspect what they've actually identified is the psychic nut-job region of the brain.
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They are called Minichlorians, you nincompoop!
MIDI (Score:1)
mental imagery in practice (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:mental imagery in practice (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:mental imagery in practice (Score:4, Interesting)
You might find Phantoms in the Brain [google.com] an interesting read. One of the items he mentions is that scratching an area near the missing limb in terms of the part of the brain responsible for interpreting its signals may allow one to scratch an itch in a phantom.
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Yes, but your dad's itch was in his missing part. If you had read TFS, you would have read she scratched her head with her phantom limb. If where she had perceived an itch was in the missing part... no, you can't perceive with a missing head.
She was asked to scratch her cheek. It wasn't a physical irritation, so it seems reasonable that the imagined itch could be relieved if the brain believed it was scratched.
This would also be true for itches caused by nonverbal body language expression. Your brain wa
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for a horrifying read on phantom itching: (Score:5, Informative)
consider this new yorker piece:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/30/080630fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all [newyorker.com]
basically, this poor woman's condition has bolstered neurologists rethinking of the itch sensation as something completely unrelated to pain. she had an incredibly rare "phantom itch". how disabling was it? she scratched THROUGH HER SKULL, until she was scratching brain matter
she survived, in a debilitated condition, but she did better than her roommate, who, with a similar phantom itch, scratched through to his carotid, and killed himself
read, for an especially horrifying insight into what its like to live with a phantom itch:
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I'm continually surprised at how things are explained away by the scientific establishment as being "the placebo effect," because the placebo effect is really quite extraordinary, and only seems otherwise because of its prevalence. I mean, really, if someone takes sugar pills not knowing that they are just sugar pills and experiences the painkiller effects of morphine or cancer remission, or even side effects like nausea and headaches (all of which are documented examples), how is it even acceptable to jus
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I wonder what one could do with a phantom penis. Any volunteers? Let me know the results. I can supply a phantom girlfriend for the experiment, if necessary.
That's a pretty transparent ploy.
Could be useful (Score:5, Interesting)
Now that they've found it, I'd like to see if they could - though I understand such specific manipulation is no doubt a long way off - work on a way to stimulate the area artificially. The ability to build controllable phantom limbs could be of great use for interacting with virtual realities. Imagine, while still having full control of your senses and limbs, being able to walk around a second entirely separate world with an entirely separate body; a lucid, computer-assisted daydream, essentially.
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Can't really go google-digging for a link at work, but I remember an experiment called "Avatar" where a guy rigged a camera-mount to point down at him like in a third-person game. The video feed would play in a helmet he wore. So essentially, he was looking down at himself when he wore the suit. It shifted his sense of location away from his head to several feet behind and above him.
Some other experiment(or perhaps the same one?) also used a video feed to replace the subject's viewpoint to a camera's positi
A serious question (Score:5, Interesting)
Do male to female transexuals get phantom erections after the operation?
Re:A serious question (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, we do.
I'm just coming up to 3 years post-op. I no-longer get a phantom penis when awake, but I sometimes have something I call "the hermaphrodite dream", where I have both a penis and vagina. The first few times, it messed with my head a bit, but now I'm kinda OK with it, and it only happens once or twice a year.
Re:A serious question (Score:4, Funny)
I'm just coming up to 3 years post-op.
Hopefully that's not a recommendation. I'd imagine if the average Slashdotter had their own breasts to fondle, they'd never leave their basements.
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Ob: well you can go and fuck yourself!
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Erm.. not to invalidate who you are or anything, but are you sure SRS was for you? I mean, your subconscious insisting you have body parts which are no longer there must be ... tiring.
Would you do it again, knowing what you know now about your subconscious body image? Did you feel that society would not consider you to be fully female with a penis?
(I really really hope I'm not being insulting or anything; I'm being genuinely curious here...)
Very sure SRS was for me - I feel so much better now and, er, the sex is fantastic. :-}
And I absolutely would do it again, in a heartbeat. I didn't have SRS for society, I had it for me.
My only regret is that I didn't do it sooner.
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Do male to female transexuals get phantom erections after the operation?
No.
But I just did, thinking about it.
cheers,
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Phantom limb usually happens in people that suddenly lose a limb. Like they wake up in the hospital after a particularly vicious night of drinking and are missing their arm or leg. Or they get their arm blown off in whichever war is currently being called 'the war'
It mostly stems from the brain's need to be able to tell the exact position of limbs in relation to the rest of the body.
The penis, usually being several inches long, is not at the top of the brain's priority when it comes to this. As a male, I
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As a male, I can safely say that I have no idea what direction my penis is currently facing,
I do 'cause I can feel it touching my ankle.
Old news. I have a better link about Phantom Limbs (Score:5, Interesting)
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I came here to post the same. Great video.
The non-existant limb (Score:1)
what's it thinking?
And if it is thinking, doesn't that prove Descartes wrong?
What about Dr. Girlfriend? (Score:1)
Is anyone safe?
Mod me please. (Score:1)
Preferably an arm so I can scratch myself while carrying two cups of coffee..
Wait. This ISN'T a Venture Brothers article? (Score:2)
Damn!
(and damn the lameness filter, too!)
Hypervisor technology (Score:3, Funny)
Finally reaches the human brain...
To quote a t-shirt from the 80s (Score:2)
"PHUCK IT'S THE PHANTOM!!!"
Sadly disappointed (Score:1)
tinnitus (Score:2)
a lot of people suffer from it
there are many kinds of tinnitus, but the most common, the persistent ringing that i suffer from and a lot of others do , is, in fact, a form of phantom limb phenomenon
tinnitus is deafness, except just like that lost hand or that lost foot, sometimes the body maps the lack of information from that dead inner ear cell to the permanent "on" position, to tinnitus sufferer's permanent torture
so any research on phantom limbs is important to a lot more people reading this than the ex
this reminds me of a terrible anime... (Score:1)
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Even weirder... (Score:1, Interesting)
I once experienced something almost exactly like a phantom limb. After an episode of sleep paralysis laying on the couch on the third floor of my university library, I suddenly regained control of my arms. I was unable to open even my eyes...but I had complete control of my hands and arms. Eventually I reached up and touched my face, only to discover that there was no opposite sensation from the skin on my face. I was able to feel my hair and the features of my face, but my face felt as if it had been compl
and now... (Score:2)
to find a way to use that knowledge to build better direct neural interfaces between machine and man.
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Only if it comes with a stuffy British accent.
I wonder is a short, hydrocephalic guy with an albino sidekick helped discover the cause.
I wonder if Baron von Underbheit suffers from "Phantom Jaw".....