MRI Confirms Woman's Third Arm

Posted by John Farrier in Medicine on April 11, 2009 at 3:39 pm


After experiencing a stroke, a Swiss woman at Geneva University Hospital began experiencing phantom limb for an arm that didn’t exist — and never had. Doctors subjected her to a MRI:

Researchers instructed the woman to move her right hand. As expected, the motor cortex and visual processing areas in the left side of her brain became mobilized.

The same effects were observed to a lesser extent when the woman simply imagined moving her right hand. Imaginary movements of the woman’s paralyzed left hand prompted the same activity in the brain, but on the right side.

But when doctors asked her to move her phantom arm, her brain reacted as though the arm really existed and could be moved. In addition, the patient’s visual cortex was also activated, indicating the she actually saw the imaginary limb.

And when she was instructed to scratch her cheek, regions of the brain relating to touch were activated.

Link via Instapundit


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COMMENT

8 comments to "MRI Confirms Woman's Third Arm"

  1. DaveL
    April 11th, 2009 at 5:35 pm

    Oh... I thought it was going to be a story about how someone lost an arm, then had the phantom limb brain thing, they did a routine scan of her body but then found a third arm formed internally from an absorbed conjoined twin that she had partial control of. Anyone else get that from the title? Anyone?

  2. ozoozol
    April 11th, 2009 at 6:00 pm

    That's almost exactly what I was expecting, DaveL. Hadn't pictured the loss of one arm being part of the story, though.

  3. Johnny Cat
    April 11th, 2009 at 8:54 pm

    MRI is amazing at what (we think) it can do.

  4. shopgurl
    April 11th, 2009 at 10:31 pm

    Surely this isn't the first time they've done this experiment...

  5. ted
    April 12th, 2009 at 12:22 pm

    I think I saw her third arm painted on the Shroud of Turin.

  6. Chris Johnston
    April 12th, 2009 at 12:29 pm

    Hey, cool! This reminds me of Larry Niven's character, Gil 'the Arm' Hamilton!
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Hamilton

  7. Gilbert Lara
    April 12th, 2009 at 10:31 pm

    WHERES DR.HOUSE?!?

  8. Gauldar
    April 13th, 2009 at 8:51 am

    I hope this actualy gives insight to helping people with this problem. Some people with it have constant pain, or the feeling like they have an itch they can't scratch because the limb isn't actualy there.


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