Neuronal Principles of Mirror Therapy for the Treatment of Chronic Pain

The perception of one's own body requires the involvement of several sensory modalities, and the integration of somatosensory and visual input is considered to be the prerequisite for higher-order body experiences. The sense of self has been shown to be altered in chronic pain states such as phantom pain after the amputation of a limb, which might at least partly be caused by the co-occurring reorganization of the body representation in primary somatosensory cortex. Thus, the cortical representation of the affected body part is invaded by adjacent functional areas, which represents dysfunctional neuronal plastic…