What is Phantom Limb Pain?

Hard to imagine, but true: phantom limb pain is virtual pain in body parts that are no longer present. Affected individuals feel pain projected into amputated limbs, i.e., pain “outside the body.”

Mummy findings have proven that the technique of amputation was already known 3000 years ago in ancient Egypt. Today, surgical severance of a body part is sometimes the only way to save a human life. Patients complain of pain attacks after surgery, which become noticeable immediately or months and years later. The origin of phantom limb pain is not yet fully understood.

Where is the pain located?

Put simply, the brain is overwhelmed by the removal of large nerve areas due to surgery. The stimulus-processing areas in the brain must reorganize because of the missing nerve information. In order for the brain to rethink, the still existing “body schema in the head” must be rebuilt or outwitted. Considerable success has been achieved with electroprostheses, electrodes and drugs.

The pain memory

The more pain the patient had in the amputated part of the body, the more phantom pain he or she is usually attacked by after surgery. The nerve cells in the brain memorize pain from which the affected person had to suffer for a long time. This memorization creates the so-called phantom pain, which is no longer dependent on causative stimuli.

Contemporary Philosophy

Phantom limb pain can last for years. Mainz philosophy professor Thomas Metzinger explains consciousness as a self-model of the body, a simulation that we mistake for the body. Anyone who has ever ridden a train knows what tricks our perception can play on us: Place of action: a random train station. You sit in the compartment, look out of the window and wait for the train to depart. Finally it leaves. Mistake! It was the neighboring train on the opposite track…