In the brain, a lost limb is never really gone

A rare circulatory problem required Emily Wheldon to have her left arm amputated three years ago. Her brain still thinks it's there.

"Most days, it just feels like I've got my arm next to me," she says.

The perception is so compelling that Wheldon had to train herself not to rely on the missing limb.

"When I first had the amputation," she says, "I was trying to put my arm out to stop myself from falling."

Now, a study of Wheldon and two other people with arm amputations may help explain why they are living with phantom limbs.

Brain scans showed that in all three, "the phantom hand representation is exactly similar to the pre-amputated hand representation," even five years after surgery, says Hunter Schone , a postdoctoral associate at the University of Pittsburgh who started the p