We carry a map of our bodies around in our brains. It’s not a literal picture, but an organised pattern of brain activity. So, touch different fingers and different parts of the brain respond. Remarkably, this arrangement is highly consistent from person to person.
Known as the somatotopic map, where somato means “body” and topo means “place” in ancient Greek, this is one of the oldest and most recognisable ideas in neuroscience. But we still do not fully understand why the brain has a body map, or how important its precise organisation is.
