Essay Questions
3. What is the ‘phantom limb’ phenomenon? How can it best be characterized in terms of our knowledge of body physiology and individual psychology?
Key Points:
- Basic definition of the phenomenon as representing the situation where one feels that one has a limb after it has been amputated.
- Consideration that the ‘phantom limb’ phenomenon represents an enigma with respect to our conventional knowledge base.
- Discussion of the manner in which touch is represented in the brain (for example, with respect to the ‘Penfield Homunculus’, which shows the sensory representations of different parts of the body in the cortex), and consideration (based on extant research) that the representation of touch may be labile, resulting in a remapping of the body’s tactile representation of itself.
- Consideration that the proximity of the representations of the different parts of the body in the mapping of the body’s tactile representation, and the remapping of neurons within this after a limb amputation, is the probable reason for the ‘phantom limb’ phenomenon.
- Extra credit received for evidence of further reading (especially with respect to primary sources in the literature) beyond the material that is briefly presented in the chapter.
