Vetrugno Roberto, Arnulf Isabelle, Montagna Pasquale
University of Bologna, Dpt. of Neurological Sciences, Via Ugo Foscolo 7, Bologna, 40123, Italy.
BMJ Case Rep. 2009;2009. doi: 10.1136/bcr.09.2008.0851. Epub 2009 Feb 2.
Limb amputation is followed, in approximately 90% of patients, by "phantom limb" sensations during wakefulness. When amputated patients dream, however, the phantom limb may be present all the time, part of the time, intermittently or not at all. Such dreaming experiences in amputees have usually been obtained only retrospectively in the morning and, moreover, dreaming is normally associated with muscular atonia so the motor counterpart of the phantom limb experience cannot be observed directly. REM sleep behaviour disorder (RBD), in which muscle atonia is absent during REM sleep and patients act out their dreams, allows a more direct analysis of the "phantom limb" phenomena and their modifications during sleep.
大约90%的患者在肢体截肢后，清醒时会出现“幻肢”感觉。然而，截肢患者做梦时，幻肢可能一直存在、部分时间存在、间歇性存在或根本不存在。截肢者的这种梦境体验通常只能在早晨通过回顾性方式获得，而且，做梦通常与肌肉张力缺失有关，因此无法直接观察到幻肢体验的运动对应物。快速眼动睡眠行为障碍（RBD）患者在快速眼动睡眠期间不存在肌肉张力缺失，会将梦境付诸行动，这使得对“幻肢”现象及其在睡眠中的变化进行更直接的分析成为可能。
