Sep 30, 2026 · 1 hr 5 min · 13 segments
In this episode of Taste of Bionics, host Sarah de Lagarde welcomes one of the world’s leading experts in bionics, neurorehabilitation, and phantom limb pain research: Prof. Max Ortiz Catalan. Dialing…
Max Ortiz CatalanGuest
Sarah de LagardeHost
Now, why does it happen? That's a very interesting story because historically, in the same way that you created a theory about why you think phantom link pain happens, we all do the same, you know, and doctors and scientists will do the same based on their understanding of the body at the time.
One of the most known ideas, not only in the public, but in the scientific literature, is that there are certain changes in the cortex of the brain, because those were correlated to the princess and phantom limb pain.
However, that was always a correlation, and there was no causal relationship.
And we know that, as I said before, the brain will make you experience sensations in your body.
So we know for a long time that we have circuitry or the capacity to do that.
And for many years, there was this idea that changes in the way things are localized will create pain.
But It turns out that the reason why we know there is this map of the body is because Painfield, a famous neurosurgeon, was doing surgery in the brain and will stimulate parts of the brain.
And then patients will say, well, I feel that you're touching my hand or you're touching my foot or you're touching my elbow.
And then it sort of made a map of the body on how it's represented in the brain.
If you Google it, you will see this Mostly a man, it was mostly done with men.
And that is proportional to the area that is used in the brain to localize sensations.
And many neuroscientists will have that like a sculpture somewhere in their office.
The thing is that during that process of mapping, very, very rarely a patient reported pain.
And so one of the things that I, the questions that I post to the community in my talks since a couple of years now is if it's very hard to create pain from the cortex where we are mapping the things, where there have been observations of changes, how is it that those changes create pain? So that link between the genesis of pain and changes on the cortex has never been really established.
Now, why does it happen? That's a very interesting story because historically, in the same way that you created a theory about why you think phantom link pain happens, we all do the same, you know, and doctors and scientists will do the same based on their understanding of the body at the time.
One of the most known ideas, not only in the public, but in the scientific literature, is that there are certain changes in the cortex of the brain, because those were correlated to the princess and phantom limb pain.
However, that was always a correlation, and there was no causal relationship.
And we know that, as I said before, the brain will make you experience sensations in your body.
So we know for a long time that we have circuitry or the capacity to do that.
And for many years, there was this idea that changes in the way things are localized will create pain.
But It turns out that the reason why we know there is this map of the body is because Painfield, a famous neurosurgeon, was doing surgery in the brain and will stimulate parts of the brain.
And then patients will say, well, I feel that you're touching my hand or you're touching my foot or you're touching my elbow.
And then it sort of made a map of the body on how it's represented in the brain.
If you Google it, you will see this Mostly a man, it was mostly done with men.
And that is proportional to the area that is used in the brain to localize sensations.
And many neuroscientists will have that like a sculpture somewhere in their office.
The thing is that during that process of mapping, very, very rarely a patient reported pain.
And so one of the things that I, the questions that I post to the community in my talks since a couple of years now is if it's very hard to create pain from the cortex where we are mapping the things, where there have been observations of changes, how is it that those changes create pain? So that link between the genesis of pain and changes on the cortex has never been really established.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
