Dr. Rachel Zoffness

speaker

360 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 20 Jul

Dr. Rachel Zoffness’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

Hidden Brain · How to Combat Pain · 20 Jul 2026 podcast

So his hand was no longer attached to his body, but he was experiencing that left hand that had been removed cramping and spasming.

And that's not actually very unusual.

Up to 80% of people

who have a phantom limb experience phantom pain.

That's right.

So people who have had a traumatic injury or have had a limb amputated can have stump pain.

And stump pain is what it sounds like.

It's pain that's being generated by the injury site.

And that is a different kind of pain than what we're talking about here.

Phantom pain is when what Mateo was experiencing, where his hand had been removed, there was no hand left, but the map of his body disappeared.

that lived in his brain hadn't yet updated with that information.

So there's a map of the body that lives in the brain and it is called the homunculus.

And the homunculus is a sensory motor map of the human body.

So if I say to you right now, Shankar, sense into your left foot and see if you can feel it in your shoe and feel the sock on your skin and feel your foot on the floor, you can do that.

And you can do that in part because of the homunculus that lives in your brain that's giving you data about your entire body.

And when you tragically and traumatically lose a limb, it can take some time for the map in your brain to update.

Because without this updating like a computer, the brain is under the impression that that body part is still in danger and it's producing danger messages to get your attention.

That's absolutely right.

When I first met Mateo, he was wearing an oversized sweatshirt to hide his missing arm, and he was shrunken into the couch as if he wanted to disappear.

And he came to my office with his father, and his father described how his son had completely changed.

Showing 121–140 of 360 · page 7 of 18