For more than a hundred years, physicians have published accounts of people who perceive an amputated arm or leg as if it were still there. Many amputees feel burning, cramping, or shooting pains in these phantom limbs. Doctors explained this by saying that the patients went through a denial period due to the trauma of loosing a body-part. Experts have discovered in the last decade that the sensations which the amputees have been reporting, is …showed first 75 words of 769 total…

…showed last 75 words of 769 total…face region had completely invaded the neighboring cortex. In all four animals that were studied, the entire hand and arm region responded when the face was stimulated.         Because the numbed limb was not sending any messages to the cortex, a massive remapping occurred. Pons explains that in the thalamus, location of the chin and arm lots are next to each other. When the arm stops sending mesages to the cortex, the chin takes over. <