Mirror box therapy was first reported on in detail in the 1990s, especially the work of Ramachandran and Rogers-Ramachandran in 1996. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran pioneered the use of a mirror box in the therapy of phantom limb pain as a tool to trick or re-program the brain into thinking of the painful absent limb as the reverse image of the non-amputated limb.
Today a modern outpatient physiotherapy clinic, inpatient neuro-recovery unit or neurological centre would be very likely to both have a mirror box and employ mirror-based therapy. Within the research literature there is now also an abundance of published literature on the use of mirror box therapy for the management of post-stroke impairments and chronic regional pain syndromes.
An aspect of the use of mirror box therapy is that there are mal-adaptive changes in the brain that are being untrained. Benefit has been shown in the use for patients with body awareness and movement control impairments after stroke. Zeng in 2018 found a significant benefit with mirror box therapy after stroke for the return of upper extremity function, and as of 2021 there are 1214 mirror box studies in print.
Description provided by Cameron MacDonald of the USA
References:
Ramachandran VS and Rogers-Ramachandran D. 1996. Synesthesia in phantom limbs induced with mirrors. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 263(1369), 377-386.
Zeng et al. 2018. Mirror therapy for motor function of the upper extremity in patients with stroke: a meta-analysis. Journal of Rehabilitation Medicine, 50(1), 8-15.
