Word: limb
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SCRATCHING A PHANTOM LIMB...
...EXTREME EXAMPLE OF HOW CHANGES IN the input reaching the brain can alter its structure is the silence that falls over the somatosensory cortex after its owner has lost a limb. Soon after a car crash took Victor Quintero's left arm from just above the elbow, he told neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran of the University of California at San Diego that he could still feel the missing arm. Ramachandran decided to investigate. He had Victor sit still with his eyes closed and lightly brushed the teenager's left cheek with a cotton swab...
...index finger was being brushed, Victor said. A spot just below Victor's left nostril caused the boy to feel a tingling on his left pinkie. And when Victor felt an itch in his phantom hand, scratching his lower face relieved the itch. In people who have lost a limb, Ramachandran concluded, the brain reorganizes: the strip of cortex that processes input from the face takes over the area that originally received input from a now missing hand. That's why touching Victor's face caused brain to "feel" his missing hand...
...course, some people are naturally conservative; they avoid taking a position whenever possible. They just don’t want to have to go out on a limb when they don’t know the genus of the tree. For these people, the vague generality must be partially junked and replaced by the artful equivocation, or the art of talking around the point...
...splendid stiff-arm technique--using an outstretched limb like a jousting lance to repel defenders--adds yet another dimension. To LT, the term stiff-arm is a misnomer. "You're not just sticking your arm out," says Tomlinson. "You're punching the guy." One place to pummel is the chest, which knocks back bear-hugging tacklers. Another? "Smack-dab in the face mask," he says...