By Bruce Bower
Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 David Savage probably never expected to look down and see someone else’s hand attached to his right arm. Neither did he anticipate using the strange appendage to illuminate how the brain works. But that’s precisely what the 56-year-old hand-transplant patient has done.
Four months after his December 2006 transplant, Savage’s partial sense of touch in the new hand activated the same brain area that would have controlled his original right hand 35 years earlier, say neuroscientist Scott Frey of the University of Oregon in Eugene and colleagues.
At the age of 19, a machine-press accident led to the amputation of Savage’s right hand.
When Savage had both hands, part of his right brain responded to his left hand, and a corresponding part of his left brain responded to his right hand. After the amputation, that same part of his left brain would have been sensory-deprived and thus ready to adopt duties of adjacent sensory areas, such as those for the right arm and possibly his face.