The brain remains surprisingly stable, even after limb amputation

A study, published in Nature Neuroscience on August 21 , challenges a commonly accepted and shared knowledge in the field of neuroscience, according to which the loss of a limb leads to a reorganization of the area of ​​the brain involved in bodily sensations.

This idea that the brain's body map would recompose itself to compensate for the missing limb was based in part on work carried out on macaques . But it was already called into question by the fact that amputees continue to feel intense sensations in the missing limb, a phenomenon called "phantom pain."

"This new study helps resolve this oddity and, in doing so, opens the way to new ways of treating these symptoms," points out the American website specializing in health issues Stat .

For this work, the researchers used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to map the brains of three people before they had an arm amputated for medical reasons. During the examination, while lying in the machine, they had to purse their lips and tap their fingers. Then the same medical examination was repeated three months, six months – and even eighteen months and five years, for two of them – after the amputation.