Category: Sensory Substitution

There is no such thing as a ‘phantom limb’. On the face of it, that’s obvious – a phantom limb is no longer present and, therefore, does not exist. That is not what I mean. I mean that the ‘phantom’ in the phrase is itself the phantom. To understand this, look at it the other way around: we don’t say that a person with a limb over which she has no control has a ‘phantom brain map’ for that inoperative limb.