Supernumerary phantom limb refers to a condition where the affected individual believes and receives sensory information from limbs of the body that do not actually exist, and never have existed, on the contrary to phantom limbs, which appear after an individual has had a limb removed from the body and still receives input from it.
Some research into this area using brain-mapping technology reported that at one time, a subject was able to see and feel a phantom left arm. She was put into a brain-mapping piece of equipment to test this theory. She was told to touch her right cheek with the phantom limb. During the process, she told the observers when she started to move her arm, there was increased activity in the motor cortex of her brain, in the area to suggest the left arm. When she touched the phantom limb to her cheek and announced she did so, the observers were surprised to find that the area of the somatosensory cortex had a fluxation of increased energy in the area that corresponded to the right cheek.[1]
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