Between the late 1930s and the 1950s, neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield (1891–1976), working at the Montreal Neurological Institute, transformed understanding of the human brain by mapping the cerebral cortex during epilepsy surgery, most famously producing the motor homunculus, a distorted human figure that visually represents how different body parts are somatotopically organised along the precentral gyrus according to the precision of their motor control, through systematic electrical stimulation studies reported with Edwin Boldrey in 1937 and extended with key collaborator Herbert Jasper across the following decades. Building on earlier insights from figures such as Charles Sherrington (integrative motor physiology), Korbinian Brodmann (1909 cortical cytoarchitecture), and Otfrid Foerster (pre-1937 stimulation studies), Penfield showed that voluntary movement, sensation, speech, and even memory could be reliably localised without reducing the person to mere mechanism, a conclusion that resonates with a Christian vision of the human being as an integrated unity of body, mind, and spirit made in the imago Dei (Genesis 1:27), “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:13–14), and functionally diverse yet interdependent (1 Corinthians 12:12–26). Theologically, Penfield’s work supports a sacramental view of embodiment articulated by thinkers such as Augustine and later Calvin, in which physical structures are meaningful instruments of personal agency rather than rivals to the soul, while for personal wellbeing it undergirds modern neurosurgery, rehabilitation, and pain management by enabling safer operations and targeted therapies, and for societal health it models how careful science can protect human dignity, reduce suffering from neurological disease, and encourage ethical humility by reminding us that extraordinary human capacities are gifts to be stewarded wisely for the common good.