Facial Pain and the Instruments of Finnish Orchestra Musicians

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 […]

The farmer, his neuropathic pain and the cow fence

Documented improbable electrical treatments for pain relief are not restricted to shocks from the Nile Catfish. ‘An interesting Case’ is described by Professor Jock Murray of the Division of Neurology, Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, Canada, in which he relates the bespoke treatment that a Canadian farmer had developed for alleviating constant pain in his leg. […]

“Swearing helps us battle pain – no matter what language we curse in”

A replication (with Japanese-language speakers and English-language speakers) of the Ig Nobel Peace Prize-winning experiment (with only English-language speakers) about swearing and pain, described by one of the researchers, in The Conversation: Swearing helps us battle pain – no matter what language we curse in The new study is “Swearing as a response to pain: A […]

The ‘Champagne Toast Position’ test – a new diagnostic method for shoulder pain

The photo above depicts the newly developed ‘Champagne Toast Position’ test for examining the electromyographic activity of the supraspinatus muscle. A research team from the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, US, developed the test as a more effective alternative to Jobe’s test (a.k.a. the Empty Can Test) . . . The […]

Ig Nobel Prize-winning swearing research wins best science book prize

Black Sheep: The Hidden Benefits of Being Bad, a new book by Richard Stephens, is the British Psychological Society’s Book Award winner — in the category Popular Science. The BPS’s Book Awards have just been announced. In the year 2010, Richard Stephens and two colleagues were awarded the Ig Nobel Peace Prize, for confirming the widely held belief that swearing […]