Acquired ‘Mirror Pain’ in Amputees
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1
Monash University, Monash Alfred Psychiatry Research Center, Australia
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2
Monash University, Experimental Neuropsychology Research Unit, Australia
For some people, observing pain in another person causes the sensation of pain to oneself: ‘mirror pain’. Early anecdotal reports of mirror pain indicate this experience is not uncommon among amputees with phantom limb pain. In fact, in the first systematic investigation of mirror pain following amputation, we found as many as 16 % of an amputee sample reported experiencing mirror pain. We then used electroencephalography (EEG) to determine if amputees who experience mirror pain process observed pain differently to controls. While observing pain-related images, we found amputees who experience mirror pain exhibited a unique neurophysiological response to observed pain, compared to controls, perhaps reflective of changes in inhibitory processing. To investigate whether these neurophysiological differences were driven by abnormalities in putative ‘mirror systems’ for pain, overlapping brain regions involved in experiencing pain and observing another’s experience of pain, we then employed transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). We observed an enhanced motor response to observed pain in amputees who experience mirror pain, compared to controls, which may reflect disinhibited mirror activity. We also explored the specificity of these neurophysiological differences in the motor cortex in the absence of images of pain. We found no difference between motor cortical excitability and inhibition in amputees who experience mirror pain compared to controls. This implicates specific neural processes in response to actual seen, or to imagined, pain in the experience of mirror pain. These studies describe the very first attempt at obtaining a clinical description of mirror pain in amputees, and the investigation of its neurophysiological underpinnings.
Acknowledgements
Dr Anina Rich
Keywords:
synaesthesia,
phantom limb pain,
Empathy for pain,
mirror systems,
Empathy
Conference:
ACNS-2012 Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Conference, Brisbane, Australia, 29 Nov - 2 Dec, 2012.
Presentation Type:
Oral Presentation
Topic:
Emotion and Social
Citation:
Fitzgibbon
BM,
Enticott
PG,
Giummarra
MJ,
Fitzgerald
PB,
Georgiou-Karistianis
N and
Bradshaw
JL
(2012). Acquired ‘Mirror Pain’ in Amputees.
Conference Abstract:
ACNS-2012 Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Conference.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2012.208.00115
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Received:
25 Oct 2012;
Published Online:
07 Nov 2012.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Bernadette M Fitzgibbon, Monash University, Monash Alfred Psychiatry Research Center, Melbourne, Australia, bernadette.fitzgibbon@monash.edu