Exploring Phantom Limbs

After reading the article, the question that came to mind was, “Can people that are born without limbs, still encounter phantom limbs?” I asked this question because one of the studies within the article described how the brain activity increased in participants when a fake hand was threatened (Macknik 20). The study was performed by Henry Ehrsson and his colleagues that the Institute of Neurology and the University of Oxford (Macknik 20). This study made me think of phantom limbs where people sense that their amputated or missing limb is still attached to their body and functioning. Does this occur even when people are born without limbs? Ideally, I would think that the brain would not even register the missing limb since there were no receptors or nerves in place to even send back to the brain. However, after doing
In his article, “Phantom Limbs and the concept of a neuromatrix”, he denounced the claim that phantoms are only felt when the amputation has been performed after the ages of 6 or 7 (Melzack 90). Support to his claim was patients who were born without limbs, but still experiencing phantom limb. One patient who was born with their hand attached to the shoulder; however, the patient felt as if the arm was half the length of its normal right arm (Melzack 90). Another patient who was born without a hand felt a middle finger and palm of the phantom hand (Melzack 90). In the other article, “Phantom Limbs in People with Congenital Limb Deficiency or Amputation in Early Childhood”, Melzack studied 125 people, mostly teenagers, who had either been born with missing limbs or had an amputation before the age of 6 (Melzack 1603). The results of this study concluded that around 20 percent of individuals born with missing limbs develop a phantom limb and an even high percent of children who lost a limb who were younger than 5 would also develop a phantom limb (Melzack