The brain can integrate transplanted hands by modifying synaptic weights

Evidence

The Chatelier case showed that one can. His phantom pains disappeared, and the motor progress he made allows us to assert that his brain succeeded in integrating his transplanted hands. ”When the motor cortex reorganizes itself, the synapses modify themselves. They change their relative influence, their ‘weight’ in the local functioning of the network of neurons… . After the transplant, such a change in neuronal connections could come to restore the representation of the hand.” Yet more proof of our brain’s striking capacity for adaptation. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 108