Mirror, Mirror

One of the most interesting, exciting, and totally inexpensive medical cures in recent times is the mirror cure for pain that often occurs in missing limbs. It's called phantom pain and is quite excruciating.

The cure involves placing a mirror along the length of the intact leg in such a way that, from the patient's view, there appears to be a limb where there is actually none. The amputee moves the limb, wiggles toes, and bends the knee and, of course, it appears that the missing leg is doing the same.

Something about the amputee seeing the missing limb "move" tricks the brain, and the phantom pain stops or lessens.

Scientific American had an interesting article, "The Mirror Cure for Phantom Pain," by Lorimer Mosley in April 2008. Mosley discusses the research to date and what the scientific community thinks of it. The most dramatic part of the article is about an amputee Mosley met in Australia:

his remarkable method of gaining relief from an excruciating pain in his missing foot: he would put his prosthetic leg in the exact location he felt his own leg to be, and then drive a screwdriver into the painful spot. As long as he could see it, driving the screwdriver into the exact site of his pain turned it off just like a switch-he called it his 'magic button'.

SEEING is the "magical" sense in the case of both the Australian amputee and patients using the mirror cure. When the brain sees the image of the missing limb (or something being done to it), it believes the limb to be present.

As exciting as this cure is for the terrible pain amputees experience, the process is also exciting for what it shows about the brain and the mind. The mind knows that there is no leg there. The brain is fooled by an image. The brain is completely literal. The brain and the mind aren't the same thing. How can they be if one knows no leg exists and  the other sends out (or fails to send) signals as if it does?

The questions and possibilities raised by this simple and inexpensive cure are huge philosophically, psychologically, even ethically.

Does visualization also fool the brain? Are the images of advertising perhaps tricking the brain in some way that compels us to consume? What else can trick the brain? Does the process have an analogue with the other senses? Might it be true, after all, that violent imagery does have a negative effect on us all?

We live in an age in which the brain is worshipped.  Brain-based everything is everywhere.The mind, in some quarters, is pooh-poohed as a comforting construct. The mirror cure suggests otherwise; at least it's not a closed case.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, indeed!


(Photo credit )

The Quick Step with Slow Change

Sometimes I read articles, written by intelligent, educated people, that are quite banal and trite, and I wonder why. Why was a piece written and why was it published?

I'm not talking about pieces with which I disagree for whatever reason, but ones that seem to state the obvious and add nothing new to the human discussion.

Most recently, an article in The Boston Globe  (Feb 28, 2010) by Samuel Arbesman, called "Warning: Your reality is out of date", fits the bill exactly. Arbesman has invented the term "mesofacts" to denote the kinds of facts which change slowly, rather than in quick fluctuation or not at all.

The daily temperature change is a quick fluctuation, as is the closing figure for the stock markets. The height of Mount Everest seemingly never changes (this is in some dispute). The earth's population growth or the changing "economic fortunes of various metropolitan areas" are examples of mesofacts - as is the addition of elements to the periodic table.

"Mesofacts are the facts that change neither too quickly nor too slowly, that lie in this difficult-to-comprehend middle, or meso-, scale."

I understand the range of rates of change. I think the term "mesofacts" is an interesting choice for the mid-range rate. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why the middle range is hard to comprehend.  Surely, we see fast, medium, and slow change all around us all the time.

People age, probably not as slowly as many of us would like, but certainly as slowly as some of the meso-changes Arbesman cites. Compost decomposes; car bodies rust; glaciers form and melt; neighbourhoods decline or are gentrified. I know that my atlas showing the USSR and other no-longer-existing countries is out of date. And I don't find that hard to comprehend.

I wonder what is the point.

Is the piece really about continuing to be informed? - Arbesman does address what we think we know from our education and how those facts change. Is it the introduction of a new-fangled term that might catch on and make its inventor famous? Is there a book coming out?

The article says nothing about facts, life, change, and rates of change that most of us don't already know. Sure, maybe some would not know about specific changes - like the new elements in the periodic table - but, most certainly, they do know perfectly well about other mesofacts.

I feel cheated by this kind of article and always suspect a hidden agenda.

I guess it's buyer beware. And maybe I'm just being naive in thinking that there should be a little more meat in the sandwich.