The Tell-Tale Brain by V.S. Ramachandran

Patients would then feel pain on their bodies. If that was true - and if the face area of the brain map invaded the territory corresponding to the hand area of the brain map - touching the face would activate the sensations in the hand area of the brain. Ramachandran suspected that once an arm was amputated, the area in the brain mapped to that arm was deprived of sensory inputs it was used to receiving - and became hungry for new sensations. Now the curious thing about this map is, even though it's continuous, the face area of the map is right next to the hand area instead of being near the neck where it should be.' 'So every point on the body's surface has a corresponding point in the brain. ' was based on an idea that there's a complete map of the body's surface on the surface of the brain,' he tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies. Several years ago, Ramachandran proposed that phantom limb pain might be caused by changes in the brain - not, as most people thought, in the peripheral nerves near the phantom limb. Chronic phantom pain - which strikes roughly two-thirds of patients who have had a limb removed - can become so severe that patients seriously contemplate suicide. Take, for example, the clinical phenomenon known as the 'phantom limb.' In the majority of cases where people have lost limbs, they continue to vividly feel the presence of the missing limb. In his latest, The Tell-Tale Brain, Ramachandran describes several neurological case studies that illustrate how people see, speak, conceive beauty and perceive themselves and their bodies in 3-D space. He has written several books about unlocking the mysteries of the human brain.

Ramachandran is a neurologist and professor at the University of California, San Diego, who studies the neural mechanisms underlying human behaviors.

Even basic sensory maps in the brain can be remapped in a matter of months, says neurologist V.S.

The Tell-Tale Brain by V.S. Ramachandran