The Somatosensory Hand Representation is Shrunken in Thalidomide-Induced Dysmelia

It is well established that functional representations in the cerebral cortex expand due to excessive use]. Little is known, however, about the reverse. In this study we investigated the relationship between congenitally missing fingers and the size of the somatosensory hand representation in thalidomide embryopathy. Twenty-one subjects participated in our study, ten with normal, and eleven with malformed upper extremities due to intrauterine exposure to thalidomide. The number of developed fingers varied between two and four in the dysmelic subjects. Fingers were missing systematically from radial (D1 first fin…