'Ghost arm' appears on the chest

What is 'ghost arm'? Scientists explain why a 'ghost arm' appeared from a patient's chest.

' Phantom limb ' (phantom limb) is a term that medical professionals use to describe a very common phenomenon in a person after being amputated by an arm or leg due to an accident, but at The previous position of the arms and legs still feels like hot, cold, itchy, painful . like they exist. That invisible arm is called the "ghost arm " (phantom arm). But there was a special case where a patient still had enough legs and arms to always feel like he had a 'ghost arm' sprouting from the center of his chest.

The ghost arm and the somatic sensory map on the brain in normal people.
Photo: Vietnamnet

The patient was referred to in The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, a 31-year-old woman without any saws that were obsessed with a 'ghost arm' because she was hurt on the brain, the information between the body and the 'soma sensory map' (somatosensory map, ie the area division map of the brain that controls which part of the body) is disturbed in the brain.

She always complained to the doctor that she had a 'ghost arm' from her chest that pierced through and she suffered unspeakable pain throughout the length of the long 'invisible arm' with her real arm. . She recalled that the feeling of "ghost arm" appeared after her paralysis of all limbs (tetraplegia), lasting 14 months to recover.

In the past, medical practitioners talked a lot about the case of 'ghost arm' when the real arm was gone. People with limb amputations still have 'ghost arm' because 'sôma sensory map' still exists on the brain but has not been deleted. But in this case, the 'ghost arm' grows from the chest and the other arms remain intact.

Researchers explain on the basis of available theories and are almost universally acknowledged: lesions on the brain have caused the 'sôma sensory map' to be drawn for parts of the body. rearrangement and transmission links between regions (on the sensory map, shoulders and chest are very close to each other) are displaced.

The shoulder-arm linkage is interrupted, transferring information from the neuron to the upper chest, mixing sensations with each other and the chest receives strange feelings for the arm.

It is this that makes the patient feel that the extra arm grows from his chest.