Phantom Limbs

The other strange finding from the experiments of the good brain doctor (author of Phantoms in the Brain) is about phantom limbs. It seems a lot of patients who have a limb amputated (cut off, in plain English) due to disease or accident, still have sensations in the amputated limb. They can also feel pain in it!

Some innovative treatments that the neurologist proposes are visualising in front of a mirror that you have the limb and then 'adjusting' the brain to the new information. For some inexplicable reasons, this treatment has worked. The moral of the story is that the brain's neurons readjust to new information (eg: amputation) in a particular way. They also get sensations from another body part (eg: face) which replicates the lost part (maybe an arm or foot)in terms of reproducing the same sensation. Touching the face may feel to the patient as if his (non-existent) arm is being touched. This is in accordance with a map (Penfield Map) that specifies which parts of the body are close to each other in their original sensations in the healthy individual. Fascinating stuff, but the author hastens to say, there is a lot that they don't know yet...