[ExI] woman wants to be paraplegic

[Anders Sandberg]

On 2013-07-18 00:02, spike wrote:
> This must be some kind of rare cyborg wish.

The body dysmorphic disorders are odd. They actually do seem to involve 
that the brain representation doesn't quite fit the body. Ramachandran 
et al. has a paper where they show there are some neurological 
correlates, http://cbc.ucsd.edu/pdf/apotem.pdf and suggest it has to do 
with some parietal-insular system. This would fit with other parietal 
body dysmorphias, such as hemispatial neglect making people deny 
ownership of parts of their bodies on the "wrong" side. I think there 
was even a paper looking at transsexuals, finding body schemas that did 
not fit their bodies. So maybe these people are simply amputees stuck 
inside a complete body.

(Then there are the acrotomophilia, people who desire amputees without 
wanting to be one themselves. I never understood that until I saw the 
pictures of Alex Minsky... but then again, I am probably more of a 
cyborgophile.)



-- 
Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford University