They micromapped the hand maps in the brains of several adolescent monkeys, cut a peripheral nerve to the hand, and immediately sewed the two severed ends close together but not quite touching, hoping the many axonal wires in the nerve would get crossed as the nerve regenerated itself. After seven months they remapped the brain. Merzenich assumed they would see a very disturbed, chaotic brain map. Thus, if the nerves for the thumb and the index finger had been crossed, he expected that touching the index finger would generate activity in the map area for the thumb. But he saw nothing of the
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