Question: in your "my work" section you said about phantom limbs what are they?

David McGonigle answered on 8 Mar 2021:

Hiya Lilly! This is an area that has fascinated me for years, and it’s quite often the area i use when I want to demonstrate how ‘plastic’ or ‘changable’ the nervous system can be. It’s also really weird, which is definitely a plus point, too!
Phantom limbs have been described for centuries, but it’s really in the aftermath of the american civil war (in the 19th century) that they began to be studied and described in more detail. There is a simple reason for this: having a limb hacked off is a pretty big shock to the body, and the civil war introduced new surgical techniques that meant far more amputees survived. A lot began to talk about a strange feeling that they encountered – while they ‘knew’ the arm, or leg, was no longer there, they could, at times, still ‘feel’ it’s presence. If you close you eyes and stand still, you can no longer see your limbs, but you ‘know’ that they’re there. So, even though the limbs had been removed, some kind of neural communication was telling the brain that they existed! Some amputees’ experiences were very specific: so they could ‘feel’ an itch in an ankle that bothered them before the operation, for example. Others – and this is the dark side of phantom limbs – experienced a lot of pain (about 70-80% of amputees experience this, called, unsurprisingly, ‘phantom limb pain). We still don’t (well, I don’t!) understand exactly how these phantoms are produced: but we do know, from brain imaging studies, that the ‘map’ of the body in the brain has changed in amputees – and the amount of change seems to follow the amount of pain (again, think about this – how weird is it to say you have pain in a limb that is no longer attached to you!). But phantom pain is terrible, and does not respond well to traditional painkillers, so a lot of people are focused on trying to change the ‘body in the brain’ map back to normal, using everything from physiotherapy to brain stimulation. This is a really big topic: a good place to start is ‘phantoms in the brain’, by v.s. ramachandran.