"Phantom" sensations following intraspinal injury.

The sensations associated at times with neural lesions in the spinal canal may have the following features and phases: 1) early anosognosia, i.e. lack of awareness of disability; 2) initial stimulation; 3) illusion of amputation; 4) disappearance of that illusion and 5) grotesque sensations. Detailed features of the phantoms such as changes in their size, position, and vividness as well as tactics evoking changes in the sensations are recorded. The special situations are described in which paraplegia is accompanied by actual amputation, or there is a phantom of an upper limb after avulsion of the brachial plexus or after extensive posterior rhizotomy. Finally phantoms associated with incomplete lesions of the cord are analyzed and the basis presented for concluding that a lesion of an ipsilateral posterior column is responsible for the phantom experience in cord lesion.