Ramachandran plots and protein structure analysis

¶ … Mind and Body re: Chapter 11 of Phantoms in the Brain

Many a patient with a tumor pronounced malignant has outlived his physician," notes V.S Ramachandran in his book Phantoms in the Brain, through the sheer mental force of the patient's will. To what extent can the mental powers of the human mind affect the body's ability to heal? The extraordinary cases chronicled by the physician hold hope in limiting the spread of cancer and also to treat affectations of the autoimmune system, such as lupus, for example.

But how to design an experiment from the extraordinary experiences of a few individuals? How to create a standard medical prescription from the extraordinary? One possible suggestion would be to take a group of individuals afflicted by such an immune disorder, and to attempt to condition temporary improvements or remissions in their ailment to a physical response that could be replicated, even when they were not feeling well. For instance, with a patient suffering in the early stages of lupus or MS (both ailments' sufferers typically have 'good days' and 'bad days'), one could ask the patient to wear a particular fabric against their skin, or to play a particular song when the patient was feeling relaxed and reasonably well and symptom-free. For the purposes of the experiment, this would have to be done with sufferers relatively new to the ailment, whose bodies had a strong somatic memory of what health was like.

Then, on bad days, this same physical stimulus would be applied to the patient, to attempt to replicate the same sensory feelings of health that he or she experienced on one of his or her 'good days.' Another possibility might be to give the patient a food or a bottle of scent with no affect on the disorder, but produced a distinct physical effect -- such as garlic or a strong-smelling ointment, that could be associated with the mind and body with health. An added, though not necessarily ethically feasible component to the experiment might be to tell the patient that the scent or food was 'healing' to see if this additionally provoked somatic as well as psychological healing in the body over time.