Sony Pictures Animation

You can even like show it to a kid.

And it basically talked about, and this is similar to the idea of Phantom Limb, that they did a study where they had somebody walking through a trail in the woods.

And this person had previously been bitten by a snake.

And they had the person then walking through a trail in the woods and they took a stick and they scraped it against the leg in the exact same spot where the person had previously had the snake bite.

I would say right now I've been reading a lot about, especially the autonomic nervous system and how it relates to pain, sort of the loops that we can potentially get stuck in.

I think phantom limbs are fascinating.

Brahmachandran, I think it was, has a book called Phantoms in the Brain, and he talks about how they sort of you know, how can you have hand pain when your arm is gone? Because it's up here.

There's a map here that translates to the rest of the body.

Even the absence of a limb can be soothed by a carefully crafted illusion, proof of the brain's willingness to believe what it sees.

The brain creates phantom limbs that feel real even when missing.

After amputation, many people continue to feel the presence of the missing limb, sometimes with uncanny vividness.

They may sense their fingers wiggling, their toes curling, or their hand resting on their lap, even though the limb is gone.

These phantom limbs arise because the brain's map of the body, stored in the somatosensory cortex, does not immediately update.

The neurons representing the missing part continue to fire, generating sensations as if it were still there.

Over time, the brain may reorganize, but for many, the phantom persists, sometimes for years.

This illustrates how the brain constructs the experience of the body internally, not simply from physical feedback.

Like, there are examples from the past, like, a example would be Go With The Flow, where it all came, you know, at once or, or, um, or where all the words come.

Like, there's a new song on this record called Phantom Limb.

It's my favorite, I think, on the record.

Yeah.

Right? And, and, and then this wiener-type dog, which somehow just knew, [laughs] I'd take this eye mask off and, and it, it would be right here just knowing I needed to just, like-

Dogs know

... love something, you know? And, um, because it's obviously very heavy, too, you know? And, um, but I, I, I had such a wonderful experience this time, and it was much different than the other two, you know, in January, and, um, and Phantom Limb just was sitting there.

It was just waiting for me.

People are like, "But I have pain here." I'm like, what does it look like to find where it's coming from? When we say that pain's a liar, now we start to understand why we have a chronic pain epidemic in the United States, is people are chasing pain instead of underlining dysfunction.

Probably the most example of pain is phantom limb pain.

Yeah.

Phantom limb pain, for anyone in the audience who doesn't know what that is, these are people who had the extremity amputated and have foot pain.

So they're like, "My foot hurts and I don't have one." It can be that much of a projection.

And it has to do with some issues that pain message is carried through the spinal cord all the way up to the processing center in the brain.

[upbeat music] Okay.

This week we're very pleased to be joined by a friend of the show, the creator and writer of titles such as Nocturnal Commissions, Past Tense, Ghost Band, and recent pod fave, Phantom Limbs: The Thief.

Yes.

This is the first time we've, we've spoken to him since that book, which we fucking love.

Yeah, probably, it probably shouldn't be.

But, um, longtime listeners will recognize Jason from his, his great comics in the past that we've talked about on the show, and we've had you on the show a couple of times.

Um, firstly, Pha- Phantom Limbs, fucking-

Oh, fantastic book.