Andrew Huberman· PhD
So what he developed was a very low technology yet neuroscientifically sophisticated treatment for phantom limb. It consisted of a box, literally a box that had mirrors inside of it. And the patient would put the intact hand or limb into one side, and obviously they couldn't put the amputated limb into the other side, but because of the configuration of the mirrors, it appeared as though they had two symmetric limbs inside the box. And then he would have them look at that limb and move it around. And as they would do this, they would report real time movement, or I should say real time perception of movement in the phantom limb. Now this is absolutely incredible but makes total sense when you think about the so-called top down or contextual modulation of our sensory experience, remember it's anticipation, it's anxiety, it's interpretation of what's happening that drives our perception of what's happening. And so, as he would have these patients move their intact limb to a more relaxed position, the patients would feel as if the phantom limb were relaxing. And this was used successfully to treat phantom limb pain in a number of different people.