Mirror box

Mirror therapy is a fictional 1996 by Vilayanur S. Ramachandran counting the imagery therapies form of treatment against phantom pain after amputation in the use of mirrors a healthy patient's limb is mirrored and thus the amputated limb is apparently available again for him. This phantom limb can now be selectively moved and influenced by the healthy. For example, the phantom body part from an (imaginary ) painful position can be moved to a more comfortable position, and thus the phantom pain can be alleviated.

Description

The patient is made as a mirror, that the sick or amputated hand or the foot is ill concealed from him, and in the mirror image, the healthy hand or foot is visible. Then set the healthy body part from tactile stimuli. The brain interprets these stimuli after some time as if they came from the sick or the amputated limb. The goal of therapy is to reduce the drug phantom pain treatment.

In the original form of the Spiegelanordung consists of an open-topped box with two holes through which the patient 's good arm and the amputated stump of the other arm can stick. This case is cut in half in the middle between the holes by a vertical reflecting the left and right partition. Considering the patient's chest slightly to the side, he sees his paralyzed phantom hand in the mirror and has the feeling to be able to move ( on his good hand ) now, and thus to move, for example, an (imaginary ) painful position to a more comfortable position.

Therapy development

Starting from the observation that phantom limb patients complain more about crippling and painful phantoms, if the body part was actually paralyzed before his amputation ( for example, by a brachial plexus injury ), Vilayanur S. Ramachandran and Rogers - Ramachandran proposed the " learned paralysis hypothesis " before as an explanation for phantom pain. According to their hypothesis, the patient experienced with every attempt to move the phantom limb the sensation that this had not moved. This sensory impression imprinted itself on Hebbian learning in the brain one, so that the brain, even though the link was no longer available, learned that the phantom body part is paralyzed.

A phantom body part is often perceived as painful, because he feels in an uncomfortable or unnatural position from which the patient can not move away from him. To re- train the brain and thus eliminate the learned paralysis invented Ramachandran and Rogers - Ramachandran, starting from its hypothesis that mirror therapy using the mirror box.

Other areas of application

This method is also applied to allodynia, stroke, paralysis and cognitive impairment Except for amputations. So a mirror therapy for the treatment of eating disorders has been developed at the Ruhr- University Bochum. The patient is asked to look specifically into a mirror.