title: Revealing the neural fingerprints of a missing hand.
abstract: The hand area of the primary somatosensory cortex contains detailed finger topography, thought to be shaped and maintained by daily life experience. Here we utilise phantom sensations and ultra high-field neuroimaging to uncover preserved, though latent, representation of amputees' missing hand. We show that representation of the missing hand's individual fingers persists in the primary somatosensory cortex even decades after arm amputation. By demonstrating stable topography despite amputation, our finding questions the extent to which continued sensory input is necessary to maintain organisation in sensory cortex, thereby reopening the question what happens to a cortical territory once its main input is lost. The discovery of persistent digit topography of amputees' missing hand could be exploited for the development of intuitive and fine-grained control of neuroprosthetics, requiring neural signals of individual digits.
authors.affiliation: FMRIB Centre, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.|Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Sanne
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kikkert
authors.affiliation: FMRIB Centre, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.|University College, Oxford, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: James
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1599-6440
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kolasinski
authors.affiliation: FMRIB Centre, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Saad
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Jbabdi
authors.affiliation: FMRIB Centre, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.|Nuffield Division of Anaesthetics, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Irene
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Tracey
authors.affiliation: FMRIB Centre, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.|Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.|Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Radboud University Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Christian F
authors.initials: CF
authors.lastname: Beckmann
authors.affiliation: FMRIB Centre, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Heidi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Johansen-Berg
authors.affiliation: FMRIB Centre, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Tamar R
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5816-8979
authors.initials: TR
authors.lastname: Makin
keywords: functional MRI; human; motor control; neuroscience; plasticity; sensory deprivation; somatotopy