Tom Yendell and Peter Longstaff are good at thinking on their feet. They have to be: Both were born without arms. But both still became painters, thanks to the extraordinary dexterity of their toes.

A study of artists who paint with their feet shows that these individuals have finely tuned "toe maps" in their brains, where each toe can be linked with an area of brain activity visualized via fMRI.

Two artists who paint with their toes have unusual neural footprints in their brains. Individual toes each take over discrete territory, creating a well-organized “toe map,” researchers report ...