Hommie in Medicine?


somato-sensory cortex

The cortical homunculus is used to describe “the body within the brain”, a distorted human drawn or sculpted to reflect the relative space certain body parts occupy on the somato-sensory cortex (sensory homunculus) and the motor cortex (motor homunculus). The left hemisphere receives input from the body’s right side. The right one from its left side.

The lips, hands, feet and sex organs have more sensory neurons than other parts of the body, so the homunculus has corres-pondingly large lips, hands, feet, genitals:

This concept relates to many neuro-biological phenomena such as “phantom limb” and “body integrity identity disorder” and their opposite, the disappearance of body members from conscious perception as a result of brain damage.

The motor homunculus develops over time and varies in each of us. The hand in the brain of an infant differs from the hand in the brain of a concert pianist. Special abilities of a hand or other part creates deviations in the functioning of the associated areas of the brain.

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