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This "seeing" of something that was not there, and that was of course absolutely known to be missing to the subject, helped the brain reconcile itself to the body's new shape and thus remove the need for the pain centers of the brain to continue to send phantom waves of pain. In just a few minutes, Ramachandran's subjects could overcome pain that had in many cases haunted them for years and even decades.
Ramachandran based this breakthrough on an established understanding that "that there's a complete map of the body's surface on the surface of the brain." However, the way in which the body is mapped on the surface area of the brain is not as straightforward as scientists had once expected, as Ramachandran explains:
So every point on the body's surface has a corresponding point in the brain. Now the curious thing about this map is, even though it's continuous, the face area of the map is right next to the hand area instead of being near the neck where it should be. (V.S. Ramachandran's Tales of the 'Tell-Tale Brain')
The above experiment is typical of the way in which Ramachandran has helped to create the emerging field of cognitive neuroscience. By working with "patients with...
But as Ramachandran himself warns, there is still a very long way to go before the scientist knows more about what makes something beautiful than does the poet.
References
Ramachandran, V.S. (2011). The Tell-Tale Brain. New York W.W. Norton & Co.
V.S. Ramachandran's Tales of the 'Tell-Tale Brain'. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/2011/02/14/133026897/v-s-ramachandrans-tales-of-the-tell-tale-brain
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