Amputated patients can still feel the presence of an absent limb because the physically missing limb is still represented in their body representation.
The first reason is to account for disturbances in bodily awareness. Most of the literature on body representation can be found in patient studies (Head & Holmes 1911; Lhermitte 1942; Cole & Paillard 1995, Schwoebel & Coslett 2005; Sirigu et al. 1991; Gadsby 2017). With the help of the notion of body representation, and thus of body misrepresentation, one can easily explain how the way the body is experienced can be at odds with the physical reality of the body. On the one hand, ampu