Great @bodyinmind blogpost by Peter Brugger, on the social neuroscience of "xenomelia", or negative phantom limb phenomenon: "In recent times, the desire for healthy limb amputation was identified as a neurological disorder and re-labeled “xenomelia”, the foreign limb syndrome (McGeoch et al., 2011). It has been compared to the phantom phenomenon in the congenital absence of a limb (Hilti and Brugger, 2010): while sensations of a limb never physically developed can be conceptualized as an “animation without incarnation”, the converse seems true for people, who long for the surgical removal of a body part – they suffer from an “incarnation without animation” or a “negative phantom limb” despite a normal physical development (Vitacco et al., 2009)."
Posted on: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 22:59:31 +0000