Our brains sometimes just refuse to believe the truth. No, we're talking not deniers or conspiracy theorists today---just phantom limbs. If you ask RN, a 57-year-old woman, she would agree that she does not have a right hand: it was amputated after a bad car crash when she was 18. She would also tell you that she has never had a right index finger: she was born with a congenital deformity that gave her only the rudiment of a thumb, immobile ring and middle fingers, and no index finger at at all. More than 35 years after the amputation, she feels pain in a phantom right hand, which has five---not four---fully mobile fingers. This latest case study
recently published by Paul McGeoch and V.S. Ramachandran, leading brain scientists who study phantom limb syndrome
, suggests the brain have an innate, hard-wired template for body image that is independent of what ...
