How do unusual medical conditions throw light on the way complex mechanisms of the human body work?
How do new ideas challenge established theories?
How do people from widely different disciplines contribute to the development of understanding how the mind works?
How do simple experiments and equipment produce valuable scientific evidence?
What is the continuing value of research that may have been carried out many years ago?
What are the roles of humans and animals as participants in scientific research?

Activity 2: Phantom Seeing and Hearing

1. Use what you have learned from the programme about phantom limbs as the basis for suggesting answers to the following questions relating to one or other (or both) of the well-documented psychological phenomena, phantom sight and phantom hearing.

What groups of people might be prone to the phenomena?
What form might the phantom experiences take?
How might sufferers distinguish phantom experiences from real experiences?
What mechanisms might be the cause of the phenomena?

2. When you have recorded your answers, go online and log on to:

http://www.psy.uva.nl/resedu/PN/edu/CONSC/library/Melzack.htm

3. Scroll down the page until you find the section on ‘Phantom Seeing and Hearing’. Compare your own thoughts with the description given by Ronald Melzack.

4. Rate, on a scale of 1 to 5, how well you did in your transfer of ideas about phantom limbs to the associated phenomena of phantom seeing and/or phantom hearing.

Activity 3: The Silver Spring Monkeys — Did animal rights activists do science a favour?

Without the 11-year legal battle between scientists and animal rights activists over the Silver Spring monkeys, the radical idea of re-mapping of the brain might never have emerged.

Discuss some of the issues about the use of animals as the subject of scientific experimentation that arise from this particular case.

Activity 4: Create Your Own ‘Phantom Sensation’

1. Log on to http://www.newscientist.com/features/features_224322.html

2. Scroll down the article until you find ‘Try this at home folks’.

3. Try it and see what happens!