: Virtual reality is being harnessed by medicine to treat everything from pain to phobias #IndiaNEWS Imagine feeling pain in a non-existent limb or an itch that cannot be scratched. It is a maddening

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Virtual reality is being harnessed by medicine to treat everything from pain to phobias #IndiaNEWS
Imagine feeling pain in a non-existent limb or an itch that cannot be scratched. It is a maddening sensation, always nagging and niggling away, and for some amputees it is very real.Called Phantom limb pain, the sensation has been described in medical literature as far back as in the 16th century, and even has echoes in fiction. Captain Ahab, the protagonist of the classic Moby Dick, was haunted by the ghost of a lost leg. Closer home, in Vikram Chandra’s Love and Longing in Bombay, Major General Antia’s missing leg ached intolerably, years after the amputation.So how does a physician treat this ailment?In the mid-1990s, VS Ramachandran, a clinical neurologist and researcher at the University of California, San Diego, saw a patient who complained that his missing arm had clenched into a fist. The man was in agony as (phantom) fingernails dug into his (phantom) palm.Ramachandran came up with a novel solution: mirror therapy. When the patient placed his hand inside a mirror-lined box, the reflection of his good hand took the place of his missing hand. Accepting this illusion as truth, the man clenched and unclenched his good fist. The phantom pain subsided and was gone for good after two weeks of treatment – cured by a...Read more

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