This is fascinating. I recently read up on phantom limb syndrome and found one of the most horrifying ideas I've ever seen. Wikipedia summarizes: > Until recen

This is fascinating. I recently read up on phantom limb syndrome and found one of the most horrifying ideas I've ever seen. Wikipedia summarizes: > Until recently, the dominant hypothesis for the cause of phantom limbs was irritation in the severed nerve endings [...] These nerve endings can become inflamed, and were thought to send anomalous signals to the brain [...] Treatments based on this hypothesis were generally failures. In extreme cases, surgeons would perform a second amputation, shortening the stump, with the hope of removing the inflamed nerve endings and causing temporary relief from the phantom pain. But instead, the patients' phantom pains increased, and many were left with the sensation of both the original phantom limb, as well as a new phantom stump, with a pain all its own.[0] It will be interesting to see if this treatment can stop phantom limb pain. One hypothesis is that pain is the result of the brain modifying to accomodate a lack of signals from the severed limb. If this treatment prevents pain, that would be a good indicator for that hypothesis. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_limb#Mechanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_limb#Mechanism