A Remarkable Case of Phantom Limbs
This is a very interesting case of phantom sensation. It comes from an article by Lacroix et al., 1992 It describes a situation where a girl was born with her right leg 10cm shorter than her left. At age 6 she had the leg amputated below the knee, subsequently she perceived two phantom feet and three sets of phantom toes. These phantoms have not faded in ten years, and still continue to be as vivid as when she first perceived them. What is interesting is the way the phantom limbs are arranged.
- She has one whole phantom foot, including the toes, replacing the amputated foot, which was 10 cm higher than the other normal foot.
- There is another set of toes that extends from the end of the stump. These seem to represent a set of toes that she never possessed because of the limb deficiency.
- She experiences a third phantom, which is of the part of the leg that she was born without. It extends to the ground and consists of an outer shell of the missing limb, calf, foot, and a set of phantom toes.
It is interesting that the phantom sensation incorporated the abnormal posistion of the physical foot prior to the amputation, while the phantom of the amputated foot at the end of the stump did not. Thus, phantoms cannot be simple reflections of the somatosensory homunculus.
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