Are Those Your Lips or Feet? How Your Brain Rewires Itself After Amputation

From the top of your head to the bottom of your feet, your brain contains a map to your entire body. But what happens to that map if you lose a limb?

Read More:
How sights, sounds, and touch are mapped onto the brain
“The body's surface and certain features of the external world are mapped onto the brain in a highly ordered fashion. These so-called 'topographic maps' exist in all of the brain's sensory systems, as well as in its motor system. They arise during brain development, and are vital for information processing.”

Brain Remaps Itself in Child with Double Hand Transplant
“The brain reorganization is thought to have begun six years before the transplant, when the child had both hands amputated because of a severe infection during infancy. Notably, after he received transplanted hands, the patient’s brain reverted toward a more typical pattern.”

Advanced artificial limbs mapped in the brain
“Scientists have used functional MRI to show how the brain re-maps motor and sensory pathways following targeted motor and sensory reinnervation (TMSR), a neuroprosthetic approach where residual limb nerves are rerouted towards intact muscles and skin regions to control a robotic limb.”

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Elements is more than just a science show. It’s your science-loving best friend, tasked with keeping you updated and interested on all the compelling, innovative and groundbreaking science happening all around us. Join our passionate hosts as they help break down and present fascinating science, from quarks to quantum theory and beyond.

Seeker explains every aspect of our world through a lens of science, inspiring a new generation of curious minds who want to know how today’s discoveries in science, math, engineering and technology are impacting our lives, and shaping our future. Our stories parse meaning from the noise in a world of rapidly changing information.

Special thanks to Samantha Yammine for hosting and writing this episode of Seeker!

[Finkelfunk]

You don't even know the half of it. Your brains neuroplasticity, it's ability to rewire and make new connections, is fucking amazing. Having a stroke just shows you how amazing your brain can rewire the tasks of the affected limb and assign a new part to take over.
I've got the unfortunate honor to make these experience first hand. I had a stroke in the pons on June 26, a few weeks back. It affects a tiny area but left me with hemiparesis, aka my right side was totally paralyzed, speech problems, double vision and facial paralysis. I could barely lift my foot up a bit while my arm was ENTIRELY zonked out, could not move it a single bit.
Within a little over 3 weeks I can now walk, move all my fingers a bit, and basically move my arm still under big difficulties, but I can. Except for smiling my face is also nearly symetrical in it's movement and you can't even hear any problemsin my speech anymore.
All because my brain rewired the area that has died off and surrounding areas took over. Literally only took 3 weeks for that to happen, fucking amazing.

[Master_Therion]

Carpenters are prone to amputation injuries. Imagine if a carpenter confused lips with feet.
"Okay, I cut this board exactly four lips long."

[angelic]

There's some amazing research going on right now in this field.
Paralyzed individuals who have regain some movement and sense of touch after training their brains in a virtual environment(the idea was to train for the use of an exoskeleton, the regeneration of nerves etc was completely unexpected to the researchers).
Or that pressure vest for the blind that gives them a sense of echolocation(look up David Eagleman here on youtube)

[brian_]

Why are we still here? Just to suffer? Every night, I can feel my leg... And my arm... even my fingers... The body I've lost... the comrades I've lost... won't stop hurting... It's like they're all still there. You feel it, too, don't you? I'm gonna make them give back our past!

[BaconEatingRAIDBoss]

My psychology teacher did an experiment with us on this. He made us go up to a desk in the front of the classroom and made us put on arm below it and we had a fake arm slung over our shoulders. He rubbed both our real hand under the table and the fake one and it felt like the fake one was our real hand... Some trippy stuff man

[maisamahmadi]

The best curiosity Channel
Thumbs up 👍

[jetranger]

I remember reading about this in the book "Phantoms in the Brain" by Vilayanur Ramachandran. Can't recommend it enough.

[Platyfurmany]

Let's hear it for Samantha Yammine! Great debut, Samantha.

[colinp]

A year and half after having half my foot amputated I still feel that my toes are flexing although they are missing. Apparently it's a response to the new way that I use my foot when walking but it's strange when I feel it because i know that the toes aren't there. For the irst months after the op I was getting pain n my "toes" and I used to tell myself that it can't be possible, it worked and the pain subsided. You can teach your brain but it takes time because it has to unlearn that which it knows first.

[yanick]

Her foundation doesn't match her skin..

[SuperTillys]

This is actually true it's like a blind person losing their physical sight which we rely on 24/7, so the brain rewires itself for the lost of sight by enhancing the neurons senses of hearing and feeling which creates a whole new form of sight called echo location, my god the brain is literally the best and most amazing thing we humans have ever obtained.

[USAFANGELS]

Is this the same concept as if someone loses sight, his or her hearing becomes heightened? This is interesting for wounded vets, most of the post fight comes from the mental side, not the physical

[romik]

2:57 Why are we still here? Just to suffer? Every night, I can feel my leg… and my arm… even my fingers. The body I’ve lost… the comrades I’ve lost… won’t stop hurting… It’s like they’re all still there. You feel it, too, don’t you?

[TheyCallMeNewb]

Its a terrific instalment. How neurons rewire wasn't and couldn't very well yet be delineated however. Also, is the great ocean swim to see a Dnews update before long?

[erichopper]

The fact the patient was young (a boy) probably had something to do with it. I suspect a big function of some kinds of baby play (grabbing toes, touching noses, that sort of thing) is to help build that sensory map in the brain.

[timkhul]

Ramachandran on phantom limbs... Mirror box therapy. Interesting take on body perception and phantom limb pain. Dunno if it's dated.

[Zantagiro]

definitely way better than google maps!

[SpinCity]

I was waiting for a photo of Jaime Lannister to show up. Especially when she said "phantom limb".

[evilotto]

Figured a sensory homunculus would have been more well endowed

[rollog]

I have a bionic arm, the technicians that put it on me said it would act as a "phantom limb"