[ihartley]

Phantom limb is actually an interesting case that may reveal more about idiopathic pain as we study brain/body mapping better. If anyone is interested check out the work of VS Ramachandran, here's a somewhat old article about his work with phantom limb patients: http://www.npr.org/2011/02/14/133026897/v-s-ramachandrans-ta...

His latest work has been investigating body integrity identity disorder which is sort of the opposite of phantom limb: where you feel like a part of you doesn't belong.

I believe this gist of the work is that there is a mapping between our body and our brain (this is what enables one to 'know' where your body is in relation to itself when your eyes are closed) that sometimes is overloaded or malformed and can result in these issues.

[disposeofnick9]

Interesingly, there are antidepressant-like drugs used for pain like phantom limb and neuropathy (like demyelinated nerves due to Shingles)... because it can "ignored" to varying degrees. As someone who's been both deeply major depressed, where tiny pains become an all-consuming focus and not depressed where a hand sliced open is not a big deal... Pain definitely interacts with mental well-being, and can lead to a spectrum of suffering between all-consuming focus or compartmentalized item. More research needs to be done on the functional perception of pain, because it could radically reduce pain prescriptions by instead controlling the suffering of non-survival-beneficial pain at its ultimate destination rather than carpetbombing patients with addictive substances.

http://www.webmd.com/pain-management/tricyclic-antidepressan...