This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has five segments. Here are bits of each of them: The raw-broccoli experiment — What would be the effect on young adults and young children of seeing positive expressions on the faces of strangers who are eating raw broccoli? Katie Edwards at Aston University, UK, together with […]
Bearing in mind that the number of medical injections might soon be increasing, and that some find them painful, a question can arise – ‘What are the options for minimizing the pain of a medical injection?’ Have you considered holding a chopstick in your mouth (to induce a fake smile) or maybe grimacing? Sarah Pressman, […]
Aki Savolainen writes: “I found this one article my father was working on a year ago, which found out that musicians with sleep bruxism experience pain related to the severity of their symptoms (surprise), and the instrument they happen to be playing has no effect on the amount of pain experienced.” The study is: “Oro-facial […]
Dr Richard Stephens, of Keele University, UK, was a co-recipient of the 2010 Ig Nobel Peace Prize for confirming the widely held belief that swearing relieves pain. Since then, his work on swearing has continued, and he’s the lead author of a 2018 paper for the journal Psychology of Sport and Exercise (Volume 35, March 2018, Pages […]