Minneapolis Skeptics: Upcoming Talk

How the Perception of an Intact Body Can Go Awry

Twin Cities Skeptics and Minneapolis Skeptics present: "Phantom limbs, alien hand syndrome, the rubber hand illusion...How the Perception of an Intact Body Can Go Awry..."

Details here.

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If you watch a fake hand standing in for your right hand, and it is touched with a brush while at the same time your left hand, hidden from view, is similarly touched, you feel your right hand being touched. This spooky finding is called "phantom touch" and was reported in a recent issue of PLoS…
One of the bigger challenges facing researchers who are developing artificial limbs is to create prostheses that not only act but also feel like real limbs. This is especially true for the hand, which is one of the most sensitive parts of the human body, and although advanced prosthetic hands with…
FOLLOWING the surgical removal of a body part, amputees often report sensations which seem to originate from the missing limb. This is thought to occur because the brain's model of the body (referred to as the body image) still contains a representation of the limb, and this leads to the experience…
CNN has a story about a Navy neurologist who tried using mirrors to help soldiers from Iraq with phantom pain. Phantom pain is pain in amputees that is perceived to originate in the amputated limb. What causes it is not exactly clear although many theories exist. However, it is often refractory…