Waking up a sleeping sensibility
1998; Elsevier BV; Volume: 352; Issue: 9124 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1016/s0140-6736(05)60311-x
ISSN1474-547X
AutoresLB Dahlin, Stig Sälgeback, Y. Komoto-Tufvesson, Göran Lundborg,
ResumoIn his book, The man who mistook his wife for a hat, Oliver Sacks1 describes a congenitally blind woman with cerebral palsy who was convinced that she could not do anything with her hands. Her hands were mildly spastic but without objective impairment of sensation, yet she could not recognise or identify objects that were placed in her hands because she had been brought up in an environment in which normal exploratory use of the hands was prevented. Functional reorganisation can rapidly occur in the somatosensory cortex of the brain as a result of changes in afferent input from the hand, such as restricted use of the hand, and areas for reception of afferent impulses may be downregulated as a result of non-use of the hands.
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