Scientists from Manchester University (Murray and his team [1][2]) have proven that patients suffering pain in their inexsistent phanton limbs can relieve pain by using visualisation. Using different techniques, from a simple mirror to advanced virtual reality systems where the patient is able to even control the virtual limb, researchers have proven that visualisation can help the brain to relieve the 'phantom' pain.

Somehow, the brain recalls sensory information coming from the amputated limb, and this causes conscious pain in the patient. These results suggest that self-consciousness mechanisms are affected by the amputation and the brain cannot automatically adapt its internal model.

[1] C. D. Murray, E. Patchick, S. Pettifer, T. Howard, J. Kalkarni, and C. Bamford. Investigating the efficacy of a virtual mirror box in treating phantom limb pain in a sample of chronic sufferers. International Journal of Disability and Human Development, page to appear, 2007.

[2] C. D. Murray, S. Pettifer, T. Howard, E. Patchick, J. Kalkarni, and C. Bamford. The treatment of phantom limb pain using immersive virtual reality: three case studies. Disability and Rehabilitation, page to appear, 2007.

Related Links:

• Dr. Steve Pettifer page.
• Dr. Craig Murray Page.

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As reported last week in Science, a team of researchers in Cambridge have demonstrated that a patient in vegetative state preserved conscious awareness. Using a fMRI scanner the patient showed same activation patterns as healthy volunteers when she was asked to imagine playing tennis. Dr. Adrian Owen, the leader of this research, claim that the vegetative diagnosed brain was able to understand the meaning of sentences and respond consciously. For a detailed description of the research visit the Medical Research Council website. This specific research work is published in Science, 8th September 2006 under the title Detecting Awareness in the Vegetative State.

If these research conclusions are confirmed, it means that current techniques to assess the level of consciousness of humans are not fully valid. One might be unable to move or speak, however that does not neccesarily means that the subject is unable to experience some level of consciousness.

Taking this idea about consciousness level assesment to the field of machine consciousness, one could think about the best way to determine the level of awareness of a robot. Obviously, the first reference is always the Turing test. However, as demonstrated in humans, a purely external evaluation could not be valid in terms of assessing the real level of consciousness of an artificial entity. Anyway, from a strictly engineering point of view this question is irrelevant.

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