The Nocebo: What You Know Can Hurt You

A nice summary in the New York Times of the nocebo effect.  I’m surprised I didn’t think of this before, but essentially it is the opposite of the placebo effect.  If you tell a patient of the negative effects of a medication they are more likely to experience those effects.  For example if you give someone a pill and tell them that it will give them a headache they are more likely to report having a headache after taking the pill.  This is large issue when it comes to reporting side effects of various medications.

The Case of the Mirror Box and the Phantom Hand

ABC news wrote a fascinating story about an amputee that raises more questions about what our body is and how our brain plays a roll.

As the result of an accident a woman lost her hand.  As time went on she began to feel phantom pain in her missing hand.  There are plenty of stories about amputees who have phantom pain in their lost limbs, but this woman’s case is unique.  A birth defect left her hand with out a thumb and forefinger.  When she lost this hand a full five fingered phantom hand grew in its place.  She felt pain in a phantom hand that included two fingers she never actually had.

So what the heck is going on with that?  Why didn’t her phantom hand take the form of her real hand?  What does this say about how our brains process information and process pain?

As a side note in the article I noticed the researchers talked about mirror visual feedback.  I didn’t know what it was so I looked it up.  A neat youtube video shows how an amputee can “work out” their phantom limb with the use of their good limb and a mirror.