"Brain Changes" linked to Phantom pain.

So I got into the library data base and Boise state Univ. and found and article that was some what interesting. The article "Brain changes linked to phantom pain" was kinda a hard read. I am currently a Biology health major, and i could barely understand what this author was saying. But I got the jest of it.
       This article was based on a study done in both Humbolt University in Berlin and University of Alabama at Birmingham. The article goes on stating that these researchers followed images of the somatosensory cortex ( sensory part of the brain) in patients, 12 men and 1 woman, all amputees. What they would do is watch the cortex of the brain under sophisticated technology, and as they do that they would stimulate the fingers of the intact arm; lets say the left arm. Now, by doing this will stimulate the patients right hemisphere. See your brain is separated by left and right hemisphere. Each side control the opposite side of your body. So if the intact (left) arm sends messages of sensation to the right hemisphere. Then it would be only natural that the right arm would send or stimulate the left hemisphere. But in this research these patients were missing one of their limbs, whether it was a right or left limb. So, what these researchers did is that they held a mirror beside the intact arm to make it look like both arms where intact, while touching the intact hand. this created the illusion the the left hand was being touched as well. What the researchers saw was the amputated right arm was sending messages stimulating the left hemisphere of the somatosensory cortex, as if the arm was really there.
       So not only in one of the other articles did mirror therapy get rid of pain sensation, but article, this experiment acknowledges that the brain thinks and functions like the limb is still intact, when it is not. Why can't the brain make the connection that the amputated arm is not there, when the patients know its not there?

I have loaded a video for preview of how the brain can image something that is not there. It is called "

Brain Mind Lecture 4 Parietal Lobes Body Image Phantom Limbs