The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World

by Iain McGilchrist

Speech arose in humans in an area of the left frontal cortex, called Broca’s area, which lies just next to the area that controls movement of the right hand. Indeed it is widely thought that language developed, in part, from gesture. This speech area has been found to be activated even by grasp and manipulation, and is constantly involved in the production of meaningful gestures.3 Equally, restricting hand movements impairs verbal fluency.4 Speech and pointing develop together in infants: the child ‘always points while naming and does not name without pointing – stretching out the right hand’, according to Marcel Kinsbourne.5 Most remarkable of all, as mentioned, patients born without arms can nonetheless experience phantom upper limbs; VS Ramachandran describes the case of just such a woman who experienced uncontrollable gesticulation by her phantom limbs. 6 Once again, it looks as if there must be some morphogenetic schema that is innate. Detailed phantom limbs are not infrequently reported by people born without limbs.