Why can amputees still feel the limbs they have lost?

amputees

Unfortunate people who have lost a limb or even a finger will tell you that they sometimes feel as through the missing part is till there. Some say that they notice this sensation  more on a cold day than a worm one.

During World War I, in which many thousands of young men were maimed, it was believed that the sensations of ‘phantom limbs’ came from the damaged ends of nerves. Sometimes, when army surgeons performed an amputation, they cauterised the nerve ends in the stump of the limb in an effort to kill this unpleasant, lasting and often painful sensation.

Such remedies were always unsuccessful. Brain surgeons today know that, if they open the skull and lightly touch the middle of the brain’s parietal lobe with a needle, the patient will experience a tingling sensation in a limb. As the needle is moved, similar feelings occur in other parts. It is almost as though the brain’s surface carries a sketch plan of the body. The only way to kill the sensation of phantom libs would be to deal with it at source – in the brain itself. There are always body wonders.