Ever since we can first remember, one thing has always been constant in our lives and that is physical pain. From falling down to breaking a bone, each and every one of us has felt some form of physical pain. As children we cry to this pain out of sudden fear and shock from whatever caused the pain but as we got older we faced certain situations where pain was the least of our concerns. For most of us the onset of pain involved one our limbs being affected but what if we felt pain from a limb we no longer had? What of the mysterious phantom limb pain? A severe pain felt in an area you no longer physically have so how could it be cured or treated?

Dr. Tsao has devoted his life tot his peculiar infliction and has found an interesting solution, the use of mirrors. For example, if the person with phantom limb pain is missing an arm then a mirror is placed beside the arm they do have in order to trick the brain that there is a second arm. By moving the actual arm, the reflection mirrors the image giving the illusion of a real arm at your control. This significantly reduces the pain and has been quite effective. Exactly why it works remains a mystery. In the readings this week, we were given an insight into how we perceive pain. The main example was how we feel pain once we have paid attention to it. We could be bleeding long before we notice but we only really process the pain signals until we see or feel it with other senses.

Pain is a fickle sensation that really wants our attention. “The perception of pain can increase if attention is focused on the pain or decrease if the pain is ignored or attention is diverted away from the pain,” as children we found ourselves crying from the pain yet if we had friends around us they would try to distract us and calm us down effectively diverting our attention from the wound. The mechanics behind pain perception are equal fickle as pain itself. It seems as though diverting our attention is an incredible method of reducing pain, the mirror as a solution for phantom limb pain works in the same fashion. It serves to trick the brain into thinking we still have control over the limb that has been lost, this distraction reduces the pain a patient would feel.

It’s perplexing to think we can knowingly trick ourselves into reducing our own pain. The idea that a placebo can be so effective when there are no active ingredients at work but it is our beliefs that take the pain away. Like previously mentioned, the mechanics behind pain are still being discovered yet “we may get a better understand of how pain is perceived and how consciousness exists” based on the research from phantom limb pain.

Works Cited

Goldstein, B. (2015). Cognitive Psychology. Stamford: Cengage Learning.

II, S. H. (2018, January 28). Mirror Therapy for Phantom Limb Pain. Retrieved from Medicinenet: https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=88097