Melzack R, Israel R, Lacroix R, Schultz G
Department of Psychology, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Brain. 1997 Sep;120 ( Pt 9):1603-20. doi: 10.1093/brain/120.9.1603.
It is widely believed that people who are congenitally limb-deficient or suffer a limb amputation at an early age do not experience phantom limbs. The present study reports on a sample of 125 people with missing limbs and documents phantom experiences in 41 individuals who were either born limb-deficient (n = 15) or underwent amputation before the age of 6 years (n = 26). These cases provide evidence that phantom limbs are experienced by at least 20% of congenitally limb-deficient subjects and by 50% of subjects who underwent amputations before the age of 6 years. The phantoms are detailed and can be described in terms of size, shape, position, movement and temporal properties. The perceptual qualities of the phantoms can also be described by sensory descriptors and are reported as painful by 20% of subjects with phantoms in the congenital limb deficient group and 42% of young amputees. It is argued that these phantom experiences provide evidence of a distributed neural representation of the body that is in part genetically determined.
人们普遍认为，先天性肢体残缺或早年遭遇截肢的人不会经历幻肢现象。本研究报告了125名肢体缺失者的样本，并记录了41名个体的幻肢体验，这些个体要么是先天性肢体残缺（n = 15），要么在6岁之前接受了截肢手术（n = 26）。这些案例证明，至少20%的先天性肢体残缺者和50%在6岁之前接受截肢手术的人会经历幻肢现象。幻肢细节丰富，可以从大小、形状、位置、运动和时间特性等方面进行描述。幻肢的感知特性也可以用感官描述词来描述，先天性肢体残缺组中20%有幻肢的受试者以及42%的年轻截肢者报告幻肢有疼痛感。有人认为，这些幻肢体验证明了身体的神经表征是分布式的，部分由基因决定。
