- Email: [email protected]
Empathy excess
OPINION LETTERS Find the cause of pain From L. S. Illis You report Beverly Collett and Irene Tracey as calling for pain to be treated as a disease (6 March, p 6). This would be a terrible, retrograde step. I retired in 1995 after 15 years running a clinic treating patients with intractable neurological pain. It was fascinating. All the patients – and I do mean all – had previously had their pain “treated” by other doctors who had not first made a diagnosis of its cause. Patients with intractable pain invariably suspect that something nasty is eating away inside them. Imagine the effect that this, combined with the pain itself, would have. We took a comprehensive history, and after appropriate investigations gave a detailed explanation of the cause of the pain. Even when treatment was not successful in altering the experience of the pain, patients stated that knowing its cause enabled them to relegate it to a
minor aspect of their life, instead of dominating it. Lymington, Hampshire, UK
Empathy excess From Jaques de Boys Helen Thomson writes that all documented pain synaesthetes suffered traumatic pain before developing the condition: “Many are amputees, and their phantom limb is the site of the pain they feel when faced with another’s distress” (13 March, p 42). All my life – I am now 64 – whenever I heard about someone being sliced by a sharp object I felt a sharp pain in my circumcision scar. Now I know why. My case may expand the understanding of this phenomenon: unlike most amputees, I was only a week old when I was circumcised and have no conscious memory of it. It was a routine circumcision performed by a competent doctor, but in late 1945 newborns being circumcised in the UK probably did not receive any anaesthetic. Address supplied, Canada
Enigma Number 1591
Pseudo coup Bob Walker All Penny had to do this week was fill in the missing numbers so that each row, each column and each three-bythree square all had each of the numbers 1 to 9. In printing out the puzzle Joe had interchanged some of the threeby-three squares. Penny worked out which and filled in all the missing numbers. What number did Penny place in the small shaded square?
6 8 4
8 5 7 4 6
9 8 3 9
3 3 1 6
2 9 3 4 2 6 5 8 7 3 1 7 3 5 4 5 2 8 4 7
WIN £15 will be awarded to the sender of the first correct answer opened on Wednesday 19 May. The Editor’s decision is final. Please send entries to Enigma 1591, New Scientist, Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS, or to [email protected] (please include your postal address). Answer to 1585 Diving Points: The number is 6290 The winner Peter Topping of Largs, Ayrshire, UK The answer to Enigma 1583, sent in by the winner Paul Stillman, is 24 March and 26 July. We published the wrong answer in our 3 April issue.
24 | NewScientist | 17 April 2010
Muscular thinking
From Paul Ellis The idea that you can “let your body do the thinking” may go back further and wider than you suppose (27 March, p 5 and p 8). When the mathematician Jacques Hadamard was doing the research that formed the basis of his book Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field in the late 1930s, he asked Albert Einstein about “elements in thought”. Einstein responded: “The above mentioned elements are, in my case, of visual and some of muscular type.” Perhaps such a kinaesthetic approach to thought is sensible when trying to conceive of the curved space of general relativity. London, UK From Peter Harrison As I read of Tobias Loetscher’s finding that when people think of a number smaller than the previous one they look to the left and down, I found myself imagining larger numbers to the left and farther down than smaller ones. I realised I was subconsciously thinking of a spreadsheet. It seems a lifetime of using tables with headings across the top and down the left has completely obliterated the influences of my early years. Fetcham, Surrey, UK
Why flap over bats? From Keith Alexander In your editorial you repeat uncritically the propaganda that
so many bat conservationists use to try to justify the conservation of their favourite organisms (27 March, p 5). Some bats do feed on insects, but what is the evidence that they selectively eat insects that damage farmers’ crops? Won’t some insects be beneficial to farmers in being the predators and parasites of those pests? Others may well be pollinators of some of those crops. Do farmers really cut down their pesticide usage when they see bats flying over their crops? Exeter, Devon, UK From Matthew Smith If white nose syndrome is caused by a fungal infection, then it is likely that those few bats that survive will possess traits that make them resistant to the disease. These will go on to breed a new generation of resistant bats. Bats will beat this disease without the help of humans, as will the ecosystems that may themselves become significantly impacted by the loss of bats. Let’s be honest: the reason we want to limit the disease is because it may harm us, either through reducing the ecosystem services bats provide or by altering our view of what a “proper ecosystem” should be like. Cambridge, UK
Sniff at pheromones From Tristram Wyatt, Department of zoology, University of Oxford I agree with Richard Doty that there is not likely to be a human pheromone to make anyone irresistible (27 February, p 28), but that does not mean there are no human pheromones. Other mammals have smallmolecule pheromones. All rabbit pups, for example, respond to their mother’s mammary pheromone, 2-methylbut-2-enal (Nature, vol 424, p 68). In addition to pheromones, mammals have signature mixtures, the complex smells
minor aspect of their life, instead of dominating it. Lymington, Hampshire, UK
Empathy excess From Jaques de Boys Helen Thomson writes that all documented pain synaesthetes suffered traumatic pain before developing the condition: “Many are amputees, and their phantom limb is the site of the pain they feel when faced with another’s distress” (13 March, p 42). All my life – I am now 64 – whenever I heard about someone being sliced by a sharp object I felt a sharp pain in my circumcision scar. Now I know why. My case may expand the understanding of this phenomenon: unlike most amputees, I was only a week old when I was circumcised and have no conscious memory of it. It was a routine circumcision performed by a competent doctor, but in late 1945 newborns being circumcised in the UK probably did not receive any anaesthetic. Address supplied, Canada
Enigma Number 1591
Pseudo coup Bob Walker All Penny had to do this week was fill in the missing numbers so that each row, each column and each three-bythree square all had each of the numbers 1 to 9. In printing out the puzzle Joe had interchanged some of the threeby-three squares. Penny worked out which and filled in all the missing numbers. What number did Penny place in the small shaded square?
6 8 4
8 5 7 4 6
9 8 3 9
3 3 1 6
2 9 3 4 2 6 5 8 7 3 1 7 3 5 4 5 2 8 4 7
WIN £15 will be awarded to the sender of the first correct answer opened on Wednesday 19 May. The Editor’s decision is final. Please send entries to Enigma 1591, New Scientist, Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS, or to [email protected] (please include your postal address). Answer to 1585 Diving Points: The number is 6290 The winner Peter Topping of Largs, Ayrshire, UK The answer to Enigma 1583, sent in by the winner Paul Stillman, is 24 March and 26 July. We published the wrong answer in our 3 April issue.
24 | NewScientist | 17 April 2010
Muscular thinking
From Paul Ellis The idea that you can “let your body do the thinking” may go back further and wider than you suppose (27 March, p 5 and p 8). When the mathematician Jacques Hadamard was doing the research that formed the basis of his book Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field in the late 1930s, he asked Albert Einstein about “elements in thought”. Einstein responded: “The above mentioned elements are, in my case, of visual and some of muscular type.” Perhaps such a kinaesthetic approach to thought is sensible when trying to conceive of the curved space of general relativity. London, UK From Peter Harrison As I read of Tobias Loetscher’s finding that when people think of a number smaller than the previous one they look to the left and down, I found myself imagining larger numbers to the left and farther down than smaller ones. I realised I was subconsciously thinking of a spreadsheet. It seems a lifetime of using tables with headings across the top and down the left has completely obliterated the influences of my early years. Fetcham, Surrey, UK
Why flap over bats? From Keith Alexander In your editorial you repeat uncritically the propaganda that
so many bat conservationists use to try to justify the conservation of their favourite organisms (27 March, p 5). Some bats do feed on insects, but what is the evidence that they selectively eat insects that damage farmers’ crops? Won’t some insects be beneficial to farmers in being the predators and parasites of those pests? Others may well be pollinators of some of those crops. Do farmers really cut down their pesticide usage when they see bats flying over their crops? Exeter, Devon, UK From Matthew Smith If white nose syndrome is caused by a fungal infection, then it is likely that those few bats that survive will possess traits that make them resistant to the disease. These will go on to breed a new generation of resistant bats. Bats will beat this disease without the help of humans, as will the ecosystems that may themselves become significantly impacted by the loss of bats. Let’s be honest: the reason we want to limit the disease is because it may harm us, either through reducing the ecosystem services bats provide or by altering our view of what a “proper ecosystem” should be like. Cambridge, UK
Sniff at pheromones From Tristram Wyatt, Department of zoology, University of Oxford I agree with Richard Doty that there is not likely to be a human pheromone to make anyone irresistible (27 February, p 28), but that does not mean there are no human pheromones. Other mammals have smallmolecule pheromones. All rabbit pups, for example, respond to their mother’s mammary pheromone, 2-methylbut-2-enal (Nature, vol 424, p 68). In addition to pheromones, mammals have signature mixtures, the complex smells