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Neurobiology

Phantoms of the brain

Nature volume 391, pages 331–333 (1998)Cite this article

The brain often reorganizes itself after damage to some of its sensory inputs, so that neurons that were responsive to the missing inputs come to respond to remaining inputs1. After the loss of somatosensory input from the hand, for example, the region of the somatosensory cortex on the opposite side of the brain that is normally responsive to touch on the hand becomes responsive, over months of recovery, to touch on the face or arm2,3,4,5,6.

People with amputations often have the feeling that the missing limb is still present as a so-called phantom limb8. Furthermore, sensations on the missing limb can sometimes be evoked by touching ‘trigger zones’ on other parts of the body. For example, touching the face or remaining upper arm on the side of an arm amputee may produce sensations both of those body parts and of the missing hand9,10. A logical interpretation of these trigger zones is that touching the arm or the face activates neurons in the arm or the face territories in the brain, and the territories normally devoted to the hand.

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Figure 1: Evidence of brain reorganization without respecification.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. the Department of Psychology, 301 Wilson Hall, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, 37240, Tennessee, USA

    Jon H. Kaas

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  1. Jon H. Kaas
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Kaas, J. Phantoms of the brain. Nature 391, 331–333 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/34782

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