Abstract

DEMIDOFF, Alessandra de Oliveira; PACHECO, Fernanda Gallindo  and  SHOLL-FRANCO, Alfred. Phantom-limb: what the eyes don't see, the brain feels. Ciênc. cogn. [online]. 2007, vol.12, pp. 234-239. ISSN 1806-5821.

The researches about phantom limb begun with relates of people that suffered limb amputation or brachial plexus avulsion, and even in tetraplegic subjects that related the feeling of the lost or inactive limb, and many times these feelings were painful. During many time, we believed that the cause of the phantom limb feeling was psychic, but nowadays we know that this phenomenon is related to a physiological cause as well, whit the cortical reorganization, that consist in structural modifications in topographic representation of the cortical maps. The aim of this work is to point the different factors that cause the phantom limb feeling and the principal symptoms of this phenomenon, as well as show experiences already develop in subjects that present this phenomenon. © Ciências & Cognição 2007; Vol. 12: ??-??.

Keywords : phantom limb; phantom pain; corporal image; Penfield's homunculus; cortical functional reorganization..

        · abstract in Portuguese     · text in Portuguese     · Portuguese ( pdf )