Figure 2: The Sensory-Motor Homoculus: In figure 2 the sensory homoculus shows how the nervous system responds to sensations in the body. At the surface of the cortex this diagram shows explicitly how these mappings occur in highly visual terms. (Adapted from Eccles, 1987 and Kandel & Schwartz, 1985). The interesting thing about these maps is that they are "functional" groupings that are not present at birth. For example, if an individual looses a leg, that part of the map will vanish as other still working sensory areas take over the neurons.