Phantom Limb Syndrom in Nonamputees (yes this does happen)
I am talking about like phantom wings, tail, animal like ears, that kind of thing. Why post this? because I cant find any information on it, I wouldnt even post it here had i not heard of someone else having such feeling. Everyone with it is too shy, or too afraid of everyone mocking them for this. Im bringing it out in the open, so here it is
Yes It sounds weird, If you believe your phantom limbs are real flesh and blood limbs, please dont post here ><. I created this for those of us who have like phantom wings to find others who have such things.
I have felt phantom wings before, It happens from time to time, mostly when i am out in the open and am really happy or really sad, and want to fly. Thusfar I dont believe I am a furry of anysort. I honestly have felt the wings move, and it honestly felt like they were attached, I could actually feel their muscles move as if they were really attached. I have no proof besides my word, because of how hard it is to prove this. I know I dont report it because its harmless, and if I did report it I'd get put in a mental house for something that is not insaine at all. Its just my mind thinking I have wings from time to time. I honestly dont believe I have them, In fact I know I dont have wings. Im sure alot of people have phantom wings/tails/ other limbs but dont report it for similar reasons.
Want to know if I want you to post in here?
If you HONESTLY think your limbs are real, they are flesh and blood, could be touched, and all, but are just invisible(to everyone or everyone but you) then NO dont post.
If you cann FEEL the phantom Limbs, but you KNOW they are not there, then yes, please post here, let me know just how strong it is with you, like with me, i can feel the muscles in the wings up to a point, even feel it moving my skin sometimes, as if they were really there, but I know they arent, and mine only happens from time to time. so yeah, let s share
ARGUEMENTS AGAINST SUCH A THING EXSISTING ARE WELCOME AS LONG AS IT IS KEPT POLITE AND IN GOOD TASTE. polite meaning the universal deffinition of polite, and explanations of these feelings from those who understand the human mind is more then welcome.
the difference between being insaine and being a normal human who's brain seems to think it has abnormal limbs is this, Normal humans who's brain thinks it has abnormal limbs is just that, they know the limbs arent there but their brain doesnt always agree. If we were insaine we would walk around expecting people to not run into our limbs aka insaine people believe their limbs are there physically not just mentally.
warning: jerks will post in here to taunt those who feel said limbs. if you fit the 'okay to post' things but dont want everyone to know, I will not mind if you send me a PM aslong as you let me know this thread is what its about. But i do ask that you vote in the poll just so we have a general count
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Last edited by Lt_Champion on Jul 24th, 2009 at 06:19 AM
Sounds like an version of neuralgia. If chronic pain (typically intermittent) can occur without any apparent cause it seems reasonable that other sensations could happen through a similar mechanism.
Also your definition of insane is rather poor, nor could most modern psychiatrists put you in a mental institution for reporting phantom limbs.
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There are several technical reasons why it wouldn't be phantom limb (no actual amputation, highly unlikely that there is any somatosensory representation of wings, inferring the feeling of the limb rather than it having been stimulated when there was a limb there).
The most likely explanation that I can think of would be a sort of crossing of sensory signals and contextual/emotional signals. There are conditions known as synesthesia, where stimuli of one type (visual) is crossed with another (sound) and a person literally experiences visual reactions to audio stimuli (something could sound yellow, or they see the notes, etc). Another form is mixing of only visual signals, so like certain letters are a certain colour. I've seen talks where researchers have said that people can have a synesthesic relationship between how then conceptualize time and their sense of a 3d environment, in their mind, the 12 month calendar being represented as a 3d space to navigate. That a sense of touch might be associated with moods or contexts for you is not that far of a stretch.
I assume that you would like to have wings, and that this desire probably preceded any experience of "wings", which would also further lead you to interpret any unusual "touch" sensations as phantom limb, as opposed to more banal explanations.
The only context I've ever encountered for what you are talking about is the phenomenon of phantom penis in male to female transgendered people. Men who undergo sex change surgery report less instances of phantom penis than do men who have it removed because of cancer or other reasons. Theoretically, some researchers have interpreted this as meaning that male-to-female transgendered individuals might be born with a neurological body representation of a female, though a physical body of a man, the lack of phantom penis being due to the lack of neurological representation of that body part.
Issues with that theory aside, its not necessarily analogous to what you are describing because it is about something potentially missing from the neurological body map, as opposed to something new being there. Given that the development of neurological areas is dependent on that area receiving stimulation (for instance, to develop the ability to see the colour blue, you must have been exposed to it), you would have needed to have wings to be stimulated initially for such an area to develop. While the transgendered research shows there might be inconsistencies between the physical body and the map, there is still no evidence of a person ever developing somatosensory neurological tissue to respond to signals that are not coming in. For instance, it is quite questionable as to whether or not female to male transgendered individuals would have a representation of a penis, as one would have never been there to receive stimulation, thus develop the requisite neurological areas.
And while there may be gender inconsistencies, there is nothing that I have seen that would suggest that somatosensory development can cross species lines.
I have phantom wings, but there may be a physical cause for mine. When I was young, my sister and I were arguing, and she accidentally pushed me into the blunt end of a nail that was sticking out of the wall. I have the scar right between my shoulder blades, which is also the place where I feel the "wings".
I wasn't sure where you and I left off, but is it not plausible that the 'male to female" person is ashamed to have those phantom penis feelings, do to believing with every fiber in their being that they were born female?
It seems rather logical that they would reject the phantom penis feelings and claim it isn't there as sort of a denial or "moving on" mentality. Only those individuals that feared some sort of medical problem should be expected to admit to feeling a phantom penis: it would seem that it would prove to others and them that they were really men and they've fought their whole life denying that reality.
Anyway, yeah, it just seems logical that the lack of matching numbers has more to do with an conscious effort to deny what is actually being felt than with the brain having a hard time rewiring after the loss of limb/appendage?
Feel free to correct me where I have concluded falsely. I'm very interested in what you have to say and, by no means, am I set in my way of thinking on this. I'm just guessing.
Edit - I chose D as that was the closest to "none of the above." Reality: some people are wishful thinkers. Like inimalist said, you can't have a phantom limb if it was never removed. Maybe in the future we can trick the brain to wire itself for a fake appendage and then connect a cybernetic to it....which is similar to what they do now when they calibrate a cybernetic arm for people that lost them.
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Last edited by dadudemon on Mar 15th, 2010 at 01:16 AM
As far as I'm aware, this is a misunderstanding of what phantom limbs sensations are. You wouldn't get the sensation of feeling where the missing limb joined the body. In amputees they report that they will feel like their hand is itchy even when the arm is removed at the shoulder. It's actually the part of the body that no longer exists that has the feeling.
JG Ballard wrote in one of his novels about an interesting concept of mentally devolving in circumstances where a person was put into what mimicked prehistoric surroundings and that the concept of "genetic memory" came in to play. Humans have the vestigial organs and the tail bone is one. Perhaps it's not too much of a stretch to think that the genetic trace of what is left of these organs still carries some effect to the brain.
This area is not my forte though so I can't comment on the details as to how that would work or whether it's possible. Just floating an idea.
saying: "it is only logical that..." and then entering at least 4-5 levels of new and interacting variables is not very scientific
while there is a probability that anything is true, and the phantom penis is not a robustly studied phenomenon, I would say your scenario is at the "unlikely" end of the spectrum.
It would be similar to a normal phantom pain sufferer being able to get rid of their pain by believing they never had an arm. Treatment are actually of the oposite nature, they need to trick your sensory systems into thinking it is there. Sure, could it be that all interviewed transgendered people had the exact same socially mediated motivation to claim no experience of phantom penis, but considering one of the prime researchers is a male-to-female transgendered individual, I think she might have already thought of that/her own experiences might suggest otherwise.
Also, I'd argue your psychoanalysis of transgendered people, but that is less relevant.
If your reffering to me, Ive got baby pictures to prove I have always been female. if your not reffering to me then the wording made me wonder so I am just making sure >>
when testing memories for items, encoding an item with regard to its relevance to survival (especially on a Savannah, and even if the item is in no way survival relevant) is superior to all other known forms of encoding.
Whether this exists at the level of vestigal organs, rather than cognitive apparatuses, no idea
no, it is a similar example about how "feeling" is based on an internal map of the body that is dependant on the development of the actual physical body.
If you are born with no right hand, there is no representation of it on the body map. If you lose it later in life, there is. Because it is there, you can get the phantom pain.
the transgender stuff I wrote nearly a year ago. I wouldn't currently use it as the best way to address your point, but at the time it did show as a good example of what I was saying.
I'm a newb, so I'm confused as to why you referred to it as more than one level. I was only referring "denial", and nothing more.
Why would they not deny it? That would be something I could see myself denying...if I became transgendered. I would hate the fact that I still felt something for an "appendage" that belied what I felt I was.
I took a step back and viewed the group as a whole: what do they all have in common that could possibly "warp" the numbers like observed? They all KNOW they are female.
For me, denial seems like a much more logical/better choice than a very odd "pre-wiring" of the brain. The nerves were there, they sent signals for many years. The brain was wired to receive and interpret those signals. There should be no difference between the regular population and the transgendered. But, there was found to be one.
How was this study conducted? Was a CAT scan done during a specific stimulus? (If you don't know what I'm referring to, there's these weird tests that are done that can "stimulate" the phantom limb...or feeling in the phantom limb. They can then measure the brain to see if the brain is showing activity like it should.) Was it just a face to face interview? Was it a survey? Was it all of the above? Was it interviewing the doctors that did the surgeries and collecting medical information? Was it a combination of more than one of the above?
why is it illogical in your mind that the sense of being a woman trapped in a man's represents something biological?
EDIT: and "Because TSs lie" is probably not going to be any more convincing
no, it remains a theory, one of the better ones to date, and nobody has ran a serious fMRI or CAT study. It is all through patient reports. Obviously that was the meme you were looking for to salvage your counter-factual thought experiments.
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Last edited by tsilamini on Mar 15th, 2010 at 06:36 AM
How about all the people walking around with phantom brain syndrome? Y'know: they walk, talk and all that, but there's really nothing upstairs. Seems almost pandemic.
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1. That's an odd way to word what I said, and it is really misrepresenting what I've politely asked you. I said it was logical that the person would be more likely to lie about phantom pains for a removed appendage that they KNEW was not part of their gender identity. I have NEVER once questioned that what the person feels about their gender is false, wrong, or a mental illness. I never made a claim that it wasn't biological, either. Just that it seemed more logical that the person has much more reason to deny phantom pains than the brain NOT exhibiting a "characteristic" that should occur with other types of penectomies.
2. I also sense some animosity from you. I was genuinely interested in learning something from you, gaining understanding, or just simply discussing this. I was very nice and respectful from the onset. You've been rude, cheeky, and condescending. I don't understand why. Have I done something to offend you? If I have, I apologize. I like you as a poster and respect your opinions. You're one of the smartest most broadly educated people I've run across on a message board. We've had a similar conversation before, so I'm not sure why we are on this roller coaster. I'd like to keep things adult and amicable between us. I have no problem changing my posting style, when it comes to addressing you, if that's necessary. My goal isn't to alienate you or others. It's just to have fun and possibly learn a thing or two.
3. I would think less of results on a survey (even if done quite scientifically) when there could be possible motivations to lie...than I would over a CAT scan or an fMRI that gave us the same answers we are looking for.
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Last edited by dadudemon on Mar 15th, 2010 at 01:40 PM
its the same as when I tried to explain how hypothesis testing worked, or why observing random people in a room with a gun isnt scientific, or when I tried to explain why you get pissed at video games.
This isn't an insult, it is just that you have a very "folk" understanding of how the brain and science works, and you seem determined to argue it. Its cool, you have interesting thoughts, but its not really the level (errr, thats not meant to sound arrogant, Imeant level as in level of mechanism, not like as in how smart people are) I'm interested in. I've also been frusterated these past couple of weeks, so that probably doesnt help.
blah, break it down to something simpler. Why can't it be denial? it could, but that would indicate far more (and almost cartoonishly sinister) variables than the current explanations, and in fact poses no alternative theory for how and why TS individuals feel the way they do.
If it isn't that there is a biological difference between body map and body, why is it that this is exactly the feeling described by TS people?
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Last edited by tsilamini on Mar 15th, 2010 at 03:15 PM
And, yes, that was the problem I had him my psychology classes: I always approached every study with negativity and questioned the results...even if my alternatives were not better or more soundly designed.
With the gun "idea" I crapped out a idea that was thought of in mere seconds. Obviously, I tired to keep the idea of the study alive in the hopes that you would see my point (but you already saw it and partially agreed with it). If I had time to actually think out and design a real study the limited the variables to a desirable controlled outcome, while also improving on the (what I think) inferior data sampling method, my primary hypothesis would surely net results closer to what I was suggesting.
On video games, it's very similar: this aggression is contained, for the most part. There's no doubt that playing a violent or just a very competitive video game will increase aggression: my problem with the results is how quickly and swiftly it was almost ignorantly applied to the real world, as if it transferred almost wholly in sweeping statements. That was more me lashing out at the conservatards rather than the study itself.
I'm sure you took logic or even multiple logic courses. My problem with these is rejecting the swift "then Q" portions of the studies simply because of the environments, procedures, and variables used. It's possible that I put too much complexity to how the brain works. Well, that's probably a misnomer. Rather, I should say, I have a problem with making jumps without very small baby steps, proving and paving the way to the "then Q" conclusions in these studies.
Often, when thinking about alternatives, I disregard the null-hypothesis or secondary hypothesis because I'm hasty, arrogant, or both...not due to an ignorance of the proper way to set up a study. If were really designing experiments, I would setup them up properly. Since this is more of a casual conversation, I feel it rather unnecessary to mention things beyond the primary hypothesis in a casual conversation on a message board. Don't you agree that that kind of muddies up the discussion? Well, that was probably a stupid question because you do not believe that and you probably expect better out of me. I'll try to remember that the next time I suggest alternatives. I guess that takes care of the conflict: I apologize for trying to pass-off half assed ideas as alternatives.
In the topic at hand, you mentioned the primary researcher was transgendered. That presents a conflict of interest, does it not (Before you read farther, it probably doesn't, but keep in mind, I'm not nearly as knowledgeable in this area as you are. In full honesty, I could be speaking in complete arrogance...so read the rest of this paragraph with that in mind)? They teach people in college how to manage conflict of interest. To me, this smacks of more of a social motivation of the researcher to prove that it was biological from the start do to all of the skepticism and hatred that comes from the world around them. But, like I mention later, conflict of interest can be avoided with nice post-study work vis-a-vis peer review and results duplication. For me, the conflict of interest can be either financial or social. I'm sure you're not big on the latter, but those are red flags to me.
Motivation towards specific outcomes should be expected. Peer review should reduce criticism, and duplication should all but eliminate it. But, in the end, is it really that conclusive? Is it even scientific to consider the results of a "biological mechanism" when the biological mechanism wasn't even directly measured but was, instead, measured through the word of the patients? Even phrasing the questions in certain ways and orders could possibly taint that type of pool. Peer review should pick up on that, but how well would they be able to do that? The subconscious is nearly impossible to measure, and knowing how one will react to those questions and controlling for things such as "unintentional suggestions" is nearly impossible to completely avoid. There are ways to present and order as neutrally as possible, I'm sure. There's probably even ways to try and "reset" the "sample", but you're definitely more familiar with that method of setup than I am. But me simply being aware of those should at least make you feel a tad better...knowing that I'm not a complete idiot.
If feel more comfortable with these types of studies when they've stood up to legitimate criticisms and they have also been vindicated with something more solid like an fMRI or MEG (not a CAT scan, like I originally suggest. I was just throwing 'brain scan" out there, but you obviously knew what I meant, thankfully) measuring the connections in the somatosensory cortex (That has a name but I can't remember what it's called...it's like crossmodal perception, but it is has more to do with brain having adjacent parts and overlapping so that touching, say, your hand creates a response on another part of your body (closer towards the eyes, but he squama frontalis), even the phantom limb.)
I don't know much about the penis phantom "limb", though. It's relatively new, to me. I am a small fan of Vilayanur S. Ramachandran MD, PhD, and he's literally the leading expert on phantom limbs. Dr. Ramachandran has been a pioneer of neuroscience and he was the one that inspired me to (almost) get into neurosience. It would appear, however, that Dr. Ramachandran believes that the brains of the male to female transgendered are hardwired for female genitalia.* Of course, he hasn't done direct research on it with things such as an fMRI, but, this goes back to what you and I had talked about in a previous discussion: the plasticity of the human brain. Were they born that way? Maybe..maybe not. Let's assume not, just to have something to discuss: if not, is it possible that the brain can actually re-wire itself based on the will of the individual? Is that conversation ringing a bell? If not, then are people ACTUALLY born as the wrong gender? Meaning, the brain is wired for one gender, and the body is born a different gender. If that's the case, then we should see a hereditary marker for this, right?
Gender: Male Location: Killin zombies with Post-it notes
Can phantom limb syndrome can be directly related to a psychodynamic approach (Freud) which dirrectly correlates to hidden thoughts/unconscious thoughts; what do you all think?
Edit: Also, when your limbs "fall asleep" (due to a lack of blood-flow) you could be experiencing a sort of PLS, especially if you are dillusional.
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Last edited by Evilbigfoot on Mar 16th, 2010 at 03:31 PM
Re: Phantom Limb Syndrom in Nonamputees (yes this does happen)
There are no such things as "phantom wings."
Phantom limb syndrome is due to the reorganization of higher order neurons in the sensory cortex after those cells die. Think of it as crosswiring, new input going to the same central processing area that used to service the now silent limb. Your brain then mistakenly interprets a new input because its going to an area previously assigned input from the now defunct limb.
You cannot physically feel sensory input from a strucutre you don't and never will have. Phantom limb syndrome can only occour after you lose sensory input from a physical structure. Your "phatom wing" is clearly a psychological projection on your part and its artificial for you to give it credibility by hijacking a factual medical condition.
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Jul 24th, 2009 06:15 AM
