Brain, Vol 121, Issue 9 1603-1630, Copyright © 1998 by Oxford University Press
VS Ramachandran and W Hirstein
Almost everyone who has a limb amputated will experience a phantom limb-
-the vivid impression that the limb is not only still present, but in some
cases, painful. There is now a wealth of empirical evidence demonstrating
changes in cortical topography in primates following deafferentation or
amputation, and this review will attempt to relate these in a systematic
way to the clinical phenomenology of phantom limbs. With the advent of
non-invasive imaging techniques such as MEG (magnetoencephalogram) and
functional MRI, topographical reorganization can also be demonstrated in
humans, so that it is now possible to track perceptual changes and changes
in cortical topography in individual patients. We suggest, therefore, that
these patients provide a valuable opportunity not only for exploring neural
plasticity in the adult human brain but also for understanding the
relationship between the activity of sensory neurons and conscious
experience. We conclude with a theory of phantom limbs, some striking
demonstrations of phantoms induced in normal subjects, and some remarks
about the relevance of these phenomena to the question of how the brain
constructs a 'body image.'
REVIEWS
The perception of phantom limbs. The D. O. Hebb lecture
Center for Brain and Cognition, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla 92093, USA. vramacha@ucsd.edu
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