How Our Team Overturned the 90-Year-Old Metaphor of a 'Little Man' in the Brain Who Controls Movement - Scientific American
In my first neuroscience course at Columbia University, I learned about the #homunculus. This “little man” is depicted as an upside-down representation of the human body moving from toe to head in a portion of the cerebral cortex that controls movement. Wilder Penfield, the trailblazing Canadian-American neurosurgeon, created the homunculus metaphor after mapping areas of the human brain by using direct electrical stimulation in awake patients in the 1930s.
From this work, a nurse working with Penfield created one of science’s most iconic illustrations. It shows the homunculus stretched out over the brain’s surface, a small body with enlarged mouth, hands and feet, each part exaggerated in proportion to the amount of neural real estate occupied.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-our-team-overturned-the-90-year-old-metaphor-of-a-little-man-in-the-brain-who-controls-movement1/