During my PhD, I developed an Augmented Reality (AR) intervention for the treatment of Phantom Limb Pain (PLP), a condition which affects amputees and is difficult to treat. PLP is characterized by sensations of pain in the area where the limb used to be, and is often accompanied by telescoping – the perception that the phantom limb has retracted proximally.
My AR intervention focused on increasing the coherence between body perception and visual representation in combination with phantom motor control, through a series of mini-games.
After performing 8 sessions of AR training, 6 out of 7 PLP patients reported a significant reduction in PLP intensity. Additionally, fMRI results showed a decrease in neural activity during lip-pursing, indicating a reorganization in the primary somatosensory cortex. These findings suggest that treatments based on visual feedback can effectively reduce PLP intensity and promote plasticity in the brain.