About a decade ago, Philip Martinez was involved in a motorcycle accident in which the nerves in his left hand were destroyed, resulting in an amputation. However, after the amputation, his severed hand haunted him, as if it still existed, but he was immobile and in excruciating pain. He eventually found Dr. VS Ramachandran, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, who had been investigating the phenomenon Martinez was experiencing: “phantom limbs.”

To help amputees deal with their phantom pain, Ramachandran created an ingenious solution called a box of mirrors, designed to trick the brain into thinking it’s working with the phantom limb. It is an uncovered box with two compartments separated by a vertical mirror. While Martinez placed his good arm in one of the two compartments and imagined that his amputated hand was in the other compartment, from a certain angle the mirror box allowed him to see the reflected image of his good hand, as if his amputated limb were there. . As he moved his good hand while looking at the mirror image, he could not only “see” the severed limb, but also feel it. This seems almost as magical as a fantasy. In Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Harry first saw the Philosopher’s Stone in his pocket through the Mirror of Erised, before finding it in his pocket. Similarly, Ramachandran’s box of mirrors allows someone to see what he wants to happen before his brain makes it happen.

At first, Martinez felt the phantom limb thaw and move again just by looking at the reflection; when he closed his eyes, the painful sensation returned. After four weeks of working with the box for ten minutes a day, the seemingly permanent pain was cured. The mirror box had made the brain believe that the non-existent limb had started working again, relieving the pain and uncomfortable sensation. The brain had rewired itself: the body faked it until the brain did.

Neuroplasticity is the characteristic of the brain that allows it to adapt, rewire, and change its structure, similar to the ability of plastic to mold and change shape. The plastic brain challenges the long-held theory that brains, especially adult brains, are rigid structures.

In the past, neurologists have done many studies to identify which part of the brain controls which bodily function or action, also known as brain mapping. The previously accepted belief was that these brain maps, once established during childhood, could never be changed; a particular area of ​​the adult brain can control only a certain part of the body, so all regions of the brain maps were immutable. It would be as if the borders of countries had been permanently established since the beginning of time. However, the discoveries of neuroplasticity in the early 1970s led to an entirely new insight: Brain maps can expand, shrink, and become more specific to certain sensory inputs and motor functions. Ramachandran witnessed changes in brain maps when he scratched the cheek of a patient experiencing phantom pain. The patient felt the scratch not only on the cheek, but also on the phantom limb. Confirmed through brain imaging, Ramachandran concluded that the limb brain map had been mixed up with the cheek brain map. Like an emperor with a greedy desire to gain territory, the cheek map was encroaching on the limb map.

Before designing the illusory mirror box, Ramachandran discovered the brain map of phantom limbs. He observed that many amputee patients had their limbs in a sling prior to amputation, which caused the brain map to adapt to the “frozen” state of the limb. From a healthy limb, the brain receives motor and sensory signals that signal the completion of an action; however, after limb amputation, the brain no longer receives these messages. The brain therefore continues to think that the limb is frozen because it was not reported otherwise. If a tree fell in a forest but there was no one to hear the sound, did the tree really make a sound? Was the limb really amputated if the brain was not told? According to the brain map, the limb was still there, but because it was unresponsive, the brain was working harder and harder to try to get an output signal, causing excruciating “phantom” pain. Knowledge of changing brain maps combined with identification of the phantom map led to a cure for phantom pain.

Apart from the mirror box, another “trick” to change the brain is visualization. Visualization has gained popularity as an alternative way to improve any skill when it cannot be practiced, and now it has been scientifically proven through neuroplasticity. Scientist Pascual-Leone from Harvard Medical School studied two groups of people, those who physically practiced the piano and those who simply imagined themselves practicing the piano. The brains of both groups of people were consistently mapped at the same intervals and showed similar changes. The group that simply imagined playing the piano was able to play almost as well as the group with physical practice, and only needed one physical practice session to catch up. Repetitive imagining of an action strengthens the neural connections to that action in a similar way to physical practice, resulting in physical enhancement.

When I used to train for competitive tennis and was learning a new shot, my coach would tell me, “Imagine this shot in perfect detail several times and it will become easier for you.” I didn’t appreciate the advice he gave me so far. “Fake It Until You Make It” seems to have the potential to help anyone with anything, whether through the mirror box or visualization. Neuroplasticity is introducing magic into the world of science, like a sprinkle of Tinkerbell pixie dust.