ReviewTrends in cognitive sciences2017
Stability of Sensory Topographies in Adult Cortex.
Review in Trends in cognitive sciences, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 64 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
64 citing papers in PubMed, 123 citations in OpenAlex.
- Blocking tactile input to one finger using anaesthetic enhances touch perception and learning in other fingers.Journal of experimental psychology. General · 2019Trial
- Brain activation for actual and imagined hand movement following bilateral hand transplantation.Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior · 2025Article
- Stable cortical body maps before and after arm amputation.Nature neuroscience · 2025Article
- Evoking stable and precise tactile sensations via multi-electrode intracortical microstimulation of the somatosensory cortex.Nature biomedical engineering · 2025Article
- Transfer of Tactile Learning to Untrained Body Parts: Emerging Cortical Mechanisms.The Neuroscientist : a review journal bringing neurobiology, neurology and psychiatry · 2025Review
- Changes in hemispheric dominance following targeted muscle reinnervation: a case study.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Article
- A Roadmap for Implanting Electrode Arrays to Evoke Tactile Sensations Through Intracortical Stimulation.Human brain mapping · 2024Article
- Changes in Functional and Structural Brain Connectivity Following Bilateral Hand Transplantation.Neuroimage. Reports · 2024Article
- A roadmap for implanting microelectrode arrays to evoke tactile sensations through intracortical microstimulation.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2024Article
- Cortical Reorganization after Limb Loss: Bridging the Gap between Basic Science and Clinical Recovery.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024Review
- Restoration of natural somatic sensations to the amputees: finding the right combination of neurostimulation methods.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2024Article
- Against cortical reorganisation.eLife · 2023Article
- Reassessing referral of touch following peripheral deafferentation: The role of contextual bias.Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior · 2023Article
- Tessellation of artificial touch via microstimulation of human somatosensory cortex.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- [Clinical updates on phantom limb pain : German version].Schmerz (Berlin, Germany) · 2023Review
- S1 represents multisensory contexts and somatotopic locations within and outside the bounds of the cortical homunculus.Cell reports · 2023Article
- Restoration of sensory information via bionic hands.Nature biomedical engineering · 2023Review
- Plasticity of face-hand sensorimotor circuits after a traumatic brachial plexus injury.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2023Article
- Complex pattern of facial remapping in somatosensory cortex following congenital but not acquired hand loss.eLife · 2022Article
- Review
4 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Textbooks teach us that the removal of sensory input to sensory cortex, for example, following arm amputation, results in massive reorganisation in the adult brain. In this opinion article, we critically examine evidence for functional reorganisation of sensory cortical representations, focusing on the sequelae of arm amputation on somatosensory topographies. Based on literature from human and non-human primates, we conclude that the cortical representation of the limb remains remarkably stable despite the loss of its main peripheral input. Furthermore, the purportedly massive reorganisation results primarily from the formation or potentiation of new pathways in subcortical structures and does not produce novel functional sensory representations. We discuss the implications of the stability of sensory representations on the development of upper-limb neuroprostheses.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.