The people dismissing the article are right, but for the wrong reasons. This result would be interesting, but they only studied two people, and here's the impo

The people dismissing the article are right, but for the wrong reasons. This result would be interesting, but they only studied two people, and here's the important part: BOTH OF THE PEOPLE THEY STUDIED WERE BORN WITHOUT ANY ARMS. THAT'S A CONFOUNDER THE SIZE OF JUPITER. They really need to look at people that have functioning arms, but choose to paint with their feet to see if this result still holds (but maybe with a smaller effect size). Someone that doesn't have arms can very plausibly develop maps that have nothing to do with painting. These guys have been using their feet as hands for their entire life. Is painting with your feet a couple hours each week enough to develop new maps (indicating that these mappings are very malleable), or do you have to go whole hog and stop using your arms entirely for these differences to be noticeable (indicating that the mappings are not as malleable). That's basically questions a) and b) that you listed, but they are so fundamental that the study is sort of worthless without them. The remaining follow on questions can wait until we determine if this even generalizes to people with arms (which make up the vast majority of the human population). Because right now, we found out that a creative person with no arms has a brain that fires differently, and that's not really worth the cost of the electricity it took to do the study.