Healthy vocabulary
Helen Pilcher highlights the strength of the nocebo effect, in which negative expectations can produce harmful effects (16 May, p 30). A study of the language used in the Milton model of hypnosis could help doctors who wonder how to inform patients of potential side effects without inadvertently suggesting that they acquire them.
If I ask you not to think of a purple cow, you first have to visualise it, and the image then stays in your mind as you try not to think of it. If you are subsequently asked to visualise a brown cow in some detail, the image of the purple cow disappears.
Similarly, saying to a piano student, “This is the hard part of the piece” will produce negative expectations, raising the student’s anxiety level. Saying instead, “This part isn’t easy, yet” will cause the unconscious, which doesn’t deal well with a negative, to respond to the word “easy”.
These quirks of the unconscious mind can be exploited in medical treatment. When prescribing a drug, the doctor could say that in most cases, the patient can expect it to produce a particular improvement, and that they have every reason to believe the patient will respond in that way. The doctor could then go on to explain that occasionally something different might occur, but in such a case it is just a matter of discontinuing the medication and contacting the doctor so that the situation can be sorted out. The emphasis here should be on the process of “sorting it out”.
This sets up an expectation of specific improvements: the placebo effect. It builds in a sense of confidence, as the patient knows the doctor is aware that the situation might change and will be able to handle changes accordingly. This should minimise anxiety even if side effects occur, reassuring the patient that things still can go well.
The nocebo effect has some intriguing implications for government health warnings. For example, there is little doubt that smoking is unwise, but could its detrimental effects be increased by informing smokers on every cigarette packet that their habit is going to kill them? With an increasing tendency for litigation in areas of scientific dispute (16 May, p 24), might there be a case for tobacco manufacturers to sue the issuer of the relevant warning?
Helen Pilcher reports that critics are disturbed by the evidence that people can become ill or die because they believe they are dying, since “it challenges our biomolecular model of the world”. If that model is taken to mean that mental causes cannot have physical effects then it is mistaken, as experience continually shows. Whenever anyone writes down a conclusion they have just worked out, their body is responding only to conscious thoughts that precipitated these actions. Certainly the person needs the right neurons too, but they won’t work without the original thought processes.
This obvious truth only began to look suspect in some people’s eyes because of the crude dualism which used to treat “consciousness” as special and distinct. It is much better to see conscious thinking as simply an activity that has its place in the causal sequence, like anything else.
Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
The article on the nocebo effect begins with a story about someone who was hexed and then “cured” when the doctor gave him an emetic and threw a green lizard into the vomit.
I remember a similar occurrence that ended rather differently. A patient complained about a bee in his stomach that stung him repeatedly. His doctor was unable to convince him that a bee cannot live in the stomach and even if it did, at worst it could only sting him once. A young resident suggested they give him an emetic and put a bee in the vomit. After the treatment the patient felt great.
However, he came back two weeks later saying, “Doctor, I now have 100 bees in my stomach and they are driving me crazy”. A witch doctor malady should not be given a witch doctor cure.
Alternative medicine
David Allen Green suggests that there is an increasing trend towards complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) practitioners threatening libel action against those who criticise them (16 May, p 24). I am unaware of anybody prior to the chiropractors he describes taking this course of action in the UK.
Furthermore, as a medically qualified researcher of CAM, I have experienced two prominent members of the “anti-CAM brigade” attempting to take legal action against me, which I had to defend. It should be noted that the article you published on this matter is from a prominent member of the anti-CAM brigade.
How to see yourself
Out-of-body experience (OBE) is an intriguing and controversial topic on which there are only a handful of publications. In their letter (11 April, p 22), Eric Altschuler and Vilayanur Ramachandran claim that their 2007 paper () was the “first to report a method to perceive being outside of one’s body”.
However, as early as 2002, Olaf Blanke and others induced OBEs by focal electrical stimulation of the brain’s right angular gyrus in a patient undergoing treatment for epilepsy (). They suggest that “the angular gyrus could be a crucial node in a larger neural circuit that mediates complex own-body perception”.
鈥� The OBE felt by the patient in Blanke’s study was limited to observation of her legs and lower trunk, omitting other body parts.
Power to the people
If a severe climatic or violent event were to take out several large generators, for example the Severn barrage in the UK (18 April, p 32), a considerable number of buildings would cease to function. If every building generated its own electricity, it is likely many of them would still be running after such an event. With the assistance of strategically placed micro-generators, vital equipment could be up and running within hours.
For this reason, I ordered a 1-kilowatt wind turbine for my house three years ago. However, I cancelled the order when I discovered that, in keeping with UK law, the turbine is designed to stop working if the National Grid goes down. I am waiting for a change in the law.
Antimatter universe
Could it be that there is an anti-universe and that it existed, or exists, before our universe? It might explain where all the antimatter is (25 April, p 36). Perhaps the big bang created two universes: ours which goes forward in time, and an anti-universe going backwards in time.
Of course, from the perspective of the anti-universe, ours is the one made of antimatter and going backwards in time.
Pitch-perfect position
Hazel Muir reports that those who speak tonal languages are more likely to have perfect pitch (2 May, p 10). I do not have perfect pitch myself, but as a doctor and an organist I have long been fascinated by its mechanism.
It is difficult to imagine the brain having a standard pitch reference, but we do possess a remarkable ability to “remember” joint and muscle position. Over the years, I have asked many musicians with perfect pitch in what way they think they have it. The best explanation I heard is that it stems from the memory of how muscles of vocalisation feel when producing the relevant note if sung, an explanation that fits very well with the association of perfect pitch and tonal language.
Yogi boo-boo
I won’t try to represent Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s quantum physics, but I take issue with Amanda Gefter’s contention that he didn’t become famous until the Beatles got involved with him (18 April, p 46). In fact, he started touring the world in 1958 and didn’t meet the Beatles until 1967.
The Beatles had little impact on his popularity. They quit touring and recording while they were with him and then left disenchanted because of an unfounded accusation that the Maharishi had slept with Mia Farrow. In fact, the biggest increase in transcendental meditators came in 1975, when Merv Griffin got involved and had the Maharishi on his US talk show a number of times.
Dopey regulations
The recent flurry of letters about smoking regulations in various countries prompted me to comment on the lunacy that can sometimes result from the application of poorly thought-out rules (18 April, p 24, and 2 May, p 24).
In Dutch coffee shops, where marijuana can be purchased without risking legal penalty, new smoking regulations prohibit the use of tobacco in public areas. So while it is still OK to smoke straight dope or to use a bong in a coffee shop, mix one shred of tobacco with it and you could find yourself in trouble with the law.
Problem participles
I found the article “Seeing with sound” by Daniel Kish (11 April, p 31) inspiring. Thank you for including it in New 杏吧原创.
I was, however, struck by the sentence “What is it like to ‘see’ the world using sonar?” beneath the headline. It reminded me of a similar construction that appeared in the years ago: “The rabbits were observed using binoculars.” The dangling participle strikes again.
Power of love
The feature on ways of encouraging creativity (9 May, p 32) was interesting, but there was one glaring omission 鈥� love, especially the unrequited kind.
Our unique bubble
There were excellent illustrations in your article on the multiverse (2 May, p 35).
Does the choice of bubble wrap illustrate the hills and valleys of the multiverse? I wondered why the bubbles were all deflated 鈥� and then asked myself, who had all the fun? Is there perhaps one unique inflated bubble somewhere in the picture?