This link has been bookmarked by 97 people . It was first bookmarked on 24 Jun 2008, by someone privately.
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07 Sep 12
Serena Cheongdidn't know its possible to scratch through your scalp and into the brain. OMG! http://t.co/J5gphXIg
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This understanding of sensation points to an entire new array of potential treatments—based not on drugs or surgery but, instead, on the careful manipulation of our perceptions. Researchers at the University of Manchester, in England, have gone a step beyond mirrors and fashioned an immersive virtual-reality system for treating patients with phantom-limb pain. Detectors transpose movement of real limbs into a virtual world where patients feel they are actually moving, stretching, even playing a ballgame. So far, five patients have tried the system, and they have all experienced a reduction in pain. Whether those results will last has yet to be established. But the approach raises the possibility of designing similar systems to help patients with other sensor syndromes. How, one wonders, would someone with chronic back pain fare in a virtual world? The Manchester study suggests that there may be many ways to fight our phantoms.
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Ari R"But some basic features of itch remained unexplained—features that make itch a uniquely revealing case study. On the one hand, our bodies are studded with receptors for itch, as they are with receptors for touch, pain, and other sensations; this provides
psychology science body philosophy brain neuroscience perception sensation pain itching georgeberkeley
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29 Oct 08
Gardner CampbellNeuroscience, perception, phantom limbs, feedback systems. Fascinating.
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Minna StWe’re inclined to think that people normally perceive things in the world directly. We believe that the hardness of a rock, the coldness of an ice cube, the itchiness of a sweater are picked up by our nerve endings, transmitted through the spinal cord like a message through a wire, and decoded by the brain.
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direct-perception theory
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But the information we work from is poor—a distorted, two-dimensional transmission with entire spots missing.
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If visual sensations were primarily received rather than constructed by the brain, you’d expect that most of the fibres going to the brain’s primary visual cortex would come from the retina.
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“brain’s best guess” theory of perception
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But I told him about the increasing evidence that our sensory experiences are not sent to the brain but originate in it.
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perhaps many patients whom doctors treat as having a nerve injury or a disease have, instead, what might be called sensor syndromes. When your car’s dashboard warning light keeps telling you that there is an engine failure, but the mechanics can’t find anything wrong, the sensor itself may be the problem. This is no less true for human beings. Our sensations of pain, itch, nausea, and fatigue are normally protective. Unmoored from physical reality, however, they can become a nightmare:
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chronic back pain
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repetitive strain injury
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The mirror treatment, by contrast, targets the deranged sensor system itself. It essentially takes a misfiring sensor—a warning system functioning under an illusion that something is terribly wrong out in the world it monitors—and feeds it an alternate set of signals that calm it down. The new signals may even reset the sensor.
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Most chronic back pain starts as an acute back pain—say, after a fall. Usually, the pain subsides as the injury heals. But in some cases the pain sensors continue to light up long after the tissue damage is gone. In such instances, working through the pain may offer the brain contradictory feedback—a signal that ordinary activity does not, in fact, cause physical harm. And so the sensor resets.
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10 Jul 08
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We get under the hood and remove this, replace that, snip some wires. Yet still the sensor keeps going off. So we get frustrated. “There’s nothing wrong,” we’ll insist. And, the next thing you know, we’re treating the driver instead of the problem. We prescribe tranquillizers, antidepressants, escalating doses of narcotics. And the drugs often do make it easier for people to ignore the sensors, even if they are wired right into the brain.
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07 Jul 08
JameyFascinating article on how our brains perceive sensation, some case studies, and some experimental therapies. A compelling read.
medicine research science nursing for:shannon for:bos neuroscience brain
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05 Jul 08
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Pablo StafforiniIts mysterious power may be a clue to a new theory about brains and bodies.
shared_old new-import-delicious itch pain neuroscience shared_with_delicious
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01 Jul 08
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Brain's best guess theory of perception: perception is the brain's best guess about what is happening in the outside world.
the_new_yorker itching cratching perception senses neuroscience phantom_limbs library:case_studies immersive_virtual_reality obsessive_compulsive_disorder assimilating linkingthinking atul_gawande delicious_import
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29 Jun 08
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dromedaryQuite disturbing, but strangely compelling.
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shingles
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shingles
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Tickling has a social component: you can make yourself itch, but only another person can tickle you.
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Richard Gregory, a prominent British neuropsychologist, estimates that visual perception is more than ninety per cent memory and less than ten per cent sensory nerve signals.
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Rudy Garns"Its mysterious power may be a clue to a new theory about brains and bodies." (The New Yorker)
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