Lecturer: Robin Bekrater-Bodmann
Fields: Psychology, Neuroscience, Rehabilitation
Content
The amputation of a limb represents the most serious breach of a person’s physical integrity and requires extensive psychological and behavioral adjustment. In addition, many people are confronted with special perceptual phenomena after an amputation: the presence of a phantom of the lost body part, which in many cases is experienced as painful. Physiological and brain imaging results show that characteristic changes in the central nervous system correlate with the experience of pain. The perceived restoration of physical integrity, e.g. through prostheses, mirrors, or virtual reality, can normalize the functioning of the central nervous system which can have positive effects on the perception of pain. In this workshop, participants learn the sensory basics of bodily self-experience firsthand. The psychobiological changes after an amputation and their connections to the experience of post-amputation pain are examined. And finally, the implications of the findings for tailored treatments are discussed.
Literature
- Bekrater-Bodmann, R. (2021). Factors associated with prosthesis embodiment and its importance for prosthetic satisfaction in lower limb amputees. Frontiers in Neurorobotics, 14, 604376.
- Bekrater-Bodmann, R., Reinhard, I., Diers, M., Fuchs, X., & Flor, H. (2021). Relationship of prosthesis ownership and phantom limb pain: results of a survey in 2383 limb amputees. Pain, 162(2), 630-640.
- Foell, J., Bekrater‐Bodmann, R., Diers, M., & Flor, H. (2014). Mirror therapy for phantom limb pain: brain changes and the role of body representation. European Journal of Pain, 18(5), 729-739.
- Fuchs, X., Flor, H., & Bekrater-Bodmann, R. (2018). Psychological factors associated with phantom limb pain: a review of recent findings. Pain Research and Management, 2018(1), 5080123.
- Rothgangel, A., & Bekrater-Bodmann, R. (2019). Mirror therapy versus augmented/virtual reality applications: towards a tailored mechanism-based treatment for phantom limb pain. Pain Management, 9(2), 151-159.
Lecturer
I studied Psychology at the Braunschweig Technical University and completed my studies with a diploma in 2007. From 2008 to 2023, I worked at the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim: first as a doctoral student and then as a postdoc at the Institute of Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience and the Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, interrupted by a stay abroad at the Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, London University, in 2017. Since 2023, I have been working as full professor for ‘Psychobiology of chronic pain’ at the Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Faculty of Medicine, Aachen University. My team and I are interested in the neurobiological mechanisms underlying bodily self-experiences in chronic pain and the interaction between experimentally altered body perception and central nociceptive processes. We take advantage of and develop paradigms for the induction of bodily illusions and assess its cognitive, behavioral and (neuro)physiological effects, either in our pain lab or in the environment of a magnetic resonance imaging scanner.
Affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Faculty of Medicine, RWTH Aachen, Germany
Homepage: https://www.ukaachen.de/kliniken-institute/klinik-fuer-psychiatrie-psychotherapie-und-psychosomatik/team/alle-personen-a-g/bekrater-bodmann-robin/