
pmid: 18313942
Mulder and colleagues [Mulder, T., Hochstenbach, J., Dijkstra, P. U., Geertzen, J. H. B. (2008). Born to adapt, but not in your dreams. Consciousness and Cognition, 17, 1266-1271.] report that a majority of amputees continue to experience a normally-limbed body during their night dreams. They interprete this observation as a failure of the body schema to adapt to the new body shape. The present note does not question this interpretation, but points to the already existing literature on the phenomenology of the phantom limb in dreams. A summary of published investigations is complemented by a note on phantom phenomena in the dreams of paraplegic patients and persons born without a limb. Integration of the available data allows the recommendation for prospective studies to consider dream content in more detail. For instance, "adaptation" to the loss of a limb can also manifest itself by seeing oneself surrounded by amputees. Such projective types of anosognosia ("transitivism") in nocturnal dreams should also be experimentally induced in normally-limbed individuals, and some relevant techniques are mentioned.
Central Nervous System, Paraplegia, 3204 Developmental and Educational Psychology, 3205 Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Ectromelia, 610 Medicine & health, 10040 Clinic for Neurology, Dreams, Phantom Limb, 11554 Zurich Center for Integrative Human Physiology (ZIHP), Adaptation, Psychological, Agnosia, Body Image, Humans, 570 Life sciences; biology, 610 Medicine & health
Central Nervous System, Paraplegia, 3204 Developmental and Educational Psychology, 3205 Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Ectromelia, 610 Medicine & health, 10040 Clinic for Neurology, Dreams, Phantom Limb, 11554 Zurich Center for Integrative Human Physiology (ZIHP), Adaptation, Psychological, Agnosia, Body Image, Humans, 570 Life sciences; biology, 610 Medicine & health
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