🚀 go-pugleaf

Randy Poe wrote:
> Guy Fawkes wrote:
> 
>>I have a mate who suffered a brachial plexus lesion after an accident,
>>and when the arm withered went for voluntary amputation.
>>
>>the amputation saved the hassle of the awkward bit of "baggage"
>>attached to his right shoulder and always getting in the way.
>>
>>the amputation made no difference whatsoever to the pain, which is
>>considerable.
>>
>>his SO is a senior medical person here (UK) so he always had the best
>>treatments and cutting edge stuff, just last year or so "they" (meaning
>>doctors and consultants) accepted, as a result of completely new tests,
>>that the pain he was feeling was in fact "real" pain and not "phantom"
>>pain, as pretty much 99.999% of doctors prior to these tests
>>insisted... "it's all in your head"

> I thought "phantom pain" was real -- actual signals being sent
> along actual nerves which no longer end where they used to.

   It's "real" in that it's perceived the same way "real" pain is, 
because the relevant signals make their way to the brain. They're 
"phantom" in that the usual beginning of the path (pain receptor end 
organs) aren't there to begin the sequence any more, but were there 
long enough to get things started.

   The plexi and ganglia between the end organs and the brain do a 
very complex summing of incoming signals, and one neuron somewhere 
along the way will so to speak enable or disable another neuron's 
activity depending on a lot of things, and if the "disable" signal 
doesn't come along (because the end organs are gone), the pain 
continues.

> The signals just don't originate where the brain is interpreting
> them as originating. But the signals are really there, nevertheless.

   Yep.

> Sort of like injecting a packet into a network with a fake
> originating IP address.

   Nope, more like a return ping isn't possible but the router(s) 
can't tell. Analogies are dangerous.

> I never heard phantom pain called psychosomatic.

   It was common before neurologists developed more realistic models 
(as opposed to the simplistic analogical models they had been using).


   Mark L. Fergerson