Research into the role of the brain in chronic pain
As we have discussed in part 1 and 2 of this series of posts, there is some evidence that classical conditioned responses play a role in chronic pain (Flor and Birbaumer 1994; Schneider, Palomba et al. 2004; Klinger, Matter et al. 2010). We have discussed the work of Flor and others showing that injury response systems (such as motor and autonomic) … [Read more...]
Our last rubber hand illusion paper attracted this comment from one of the reviewers: ‘it would take something very special to get yet another study on the rubber hand illusion into a journal like this one’. We were pretty sympathetic to the reviewer because there really are a tonne of them out there. Here is one that was actually published a … [Read more...]
I reckon the rubber hand illusion is a great way to provide hard evidence that the brain produces our sensations according to the availability of credible information, not just according to sensory input from the body. I use the rubber hand illusion to do this, but i think there is a version of the rubber hand illusion that might do it better. I … [Read more...]
Our group has done a few rubber hand illusion experiments, not that we are really serious players in this area – if you want to take part in a rubber hand illusion experiment, start loitering around UCL – it is almost certain someone there will be doing an such an experiment. The brain mechanisms that underpin the rubber hand illusion are … [Read more...]
There has been a lot of talk and fuss about the rubber hand illusion, since Botvinick and Cohen first described it.[1] In short, by stroking the real hand, which is out of view, and a fake rubber hand, which is in view, at exactly the same time and in synch, one can induce the illusion that it is the touch on the rubber hand that one really … [Read more...]
Some time ago we posted an article that showed that a unicellular organism called slimeball could solve the planning of the British rail network better than the Brits did. Now it might be time to smirk on the other side of our face because, as Sarah Wallwork, the tireless Honours student who had the misfortune of getting me as a supervisor, will … [Read more...]
I had the honour of spending the past week with the brilliant and extremely pleasant folks of the Body in Mind group at Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA). The type of work going on here is the definition of cutting edge in my opinion, and I’m sure I was only introduced to a small part of it. I’m calling it right here right now, look … [Read more...]
In a paper in Journal of Neuroscience by Longo et al,[1] from by Patrick Haggard's group (in case you didn't know, Haggard is a very big wig in the whole sensory processing/body image stuff), they describe an experiment that I reckon is cool: they used painful laser stimuli and compared pain evoked when supposedly normal healthy volunteers (see … [Read more...]
Making people think that the rubber hand in front of them is theirs makes their real hand colder. We used the rubber hand illusion to do this. It means we can trick our brains into believing something that's not real with implications for those people who suffer from complex regional pain syndrome who have a distorted sense of their limb. Here's … [Read more...]
Disownership or conflict between vision and proprioception?
Here is a great study in which the authors investigated something we discussed in our paper Psychologically induced cooling of a specific body part.... We proposed that the cooling and tactile processing impairment we saw might reflect a kind of functional neglect. This paper by Folegatti et al in PLoS ONE[1] showed a slowing of tactile … [Read more...]