Vilayanur Ramachandran in an amazing talk on the connections between the mind and the physical world. One section of the talk is on phantom limbs—patients who lose a limb or an organ due to traumatic injury and experience sensory input as if the limb is still there. He then outlines an amazing way, using visual feedback, to relieve the pain.

This is similar to a technique that the military used with Gulf war veterans suffering from post traumatic stress. The vets had frequently been in convoys and suffered injuries when the convoys were blown up. The military used their training tools to recreate a virtual world with all the input from when the traumatic incident occurred—except instead of the vehicle blowing up, the soldiers were able to see themselves escaping unharmed. The really interesting thing about Ramachandran’s talk is that he did it in a much more low-fi way—using a mirror.