NBC reponse 2

NBC Response #2 ch 3 and 4

First off,

            Your own body is a phantom, one that your brain has temporarily

constructed purely for convenience.

—V. S. Ramachandran and S. Blakeslee

That is an awesome quote to remember. The three experiments presented give interesting testimony for this quote.       The fact that you can perceive your nose as being 2 feet long after only a few minutes of the sensations provided by the volunteer even though the knowledge you have had your whole life says that it cannot be so is confounding. After only a few moments in time, you can negate information you have held for years based on your perceptions at that moment in time! I can’t wait to go to work to try the nose elongation experiment. I, unfortunately, cannot try it now as I only have a 5 year old and a 1 year old to help me at the moment. I will put Ramachandran and Blakeslee quote stated above on the board as the quote of the week and add the experiments to my lesson plan for the week for education and career.

          This ability to perceive sensations is evident in phantom limb patients. They continue to feel pain in a limb that is no longer there and this can be fixed in an interesting way. The example given is in a patient feeling that the phantom hand is clinched. They simply used a mirror thing to project the image of the existing hand in the place the missing limb should be so that the patient can look down and see a hand where the missing hand should be and then clinch and unclench the existing hand. This fools the brain into thinking all is well and fixes the problem! This whole thing with the tricking of the brain is great in cases such as this to help people, but one can only imagine what can be done with this knowledge by people with ill intentions. Think of the possibilities of torture that can arise with this knowledge. I know, I sound like something out of a science fiction novel, but it’s true. There are people in the world that will misuse this astounding information. This stuff is all fascinating to consider.