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I am thinking about phantom limb and sensory deprivation.  When we talked about sensory deprivation, we discussed how our brains are constantly generating and that it is the external inputs that keep the brain in check.  Does phantom limb relate to this sensory deprivation?  Is the brain constantly generating experiences for our body parts, and the external inputs from the sensory neurons is what inhibits or selects these experiences?  Can some of the sensations felt in phantom limb be due to the lack of sensory input inhibiting what the brain is always generating? 

While I agree that the human examples that Paul described do not have conductors.  But I do think that many of them have either a catalyst or a leader.  When we clapped, perhaps one person clapped first, or louder than the others, affecting the rest of us in a subtly way.  Or walking down a busy street: one person will move first and others will respond, perhaps to multiple people at once.  Is our job, as teachers, to serve as a catalytic source, or a source of leadership (one of many possible in the classrom), subtly guiding or steering the emergent learning, while placing most of the control on the students, in a "distributed control system"?