Peggy Loper doesn’t know why, but she’s sure that the rapid hissed repetition of her favorite expletive somehow dulls the pain when she’s hammered her thumb rather than the nail she’d aimed for.

“Generally I start swearing even before the pain actually registers,” says the 48-year-old student from Salem, N.J. “And usually, the ouch-ouch dance, where I’m hopping from foot to foot, goes along with it. People have told me that I should try deep breathing, but I personally prefer to swear.” The F-bomb is her curse word of choice; that hard consonant at the end is particularly satisfying, she explains.

As it turns out, Loper may be right. British scientists have shown that swear words can have a powerful pain-killing effect, according to a new study published in the journal NeuroReport.

The researchers originally thought that swearing would make pain worse by focusing a person’s attention on the injury and its implications. To prove their hypothesis, they set up an experiment with 67 college students.

The students were asked to plunge their hands into frigid 41-degree Fahrenheit water for as long as they could stand the pain. Half were told to repeat their favorite curse word while their hands were submerged. The other half were asked to repeat a neutral word describing a table, such as solid or brown, while keeping their hands under water. Then the whole experiment was repeated with the two groups switching types of word. (Favorite swear words were, as you might guess, the ones starting with “F” and “S.” But since the subjects were British, the researchers also got an earful of “bollocks.”)

To the researchers’ surprise, the cursing group not only reported lower levels of pain, but also were able to keep their hands in the icy water longer. The men in the study, for example, were able to keep their hands in the water for an average of 190 seconds while swearing, but for only 140 seconds when uttering a neutral word.

The difference was even more pronounced in women. While men’s pain scores dropped by a point when they cussed, the women’s dropped by almost two full points.

The researchers aren’t sure why that might be, but the study’s lead author, Richard Stephens, has a theory. Women tend to swear less and that may make the words more powerful for them, says Stephens, a researcher in the school of psychology at Keele University in England.

Dr. Doris Cope, a pain researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, says the study findings make a lot of sense.

How much pain you feel when you stub your toe or hit your thumb with a hammer is a result both of the signals sent by the nerves in your body and of your mind’s interpretation of those signals, she explains.

And your mind can moderate those feelings of pain, says Cope, director of the university’s pain medicine program. The emotions let loose when you curse may somehow inhibit the pain response, because your brain gets distracted by the anger, she says.

Or it may simply be that cursing gives you a sense of control, Cope suggests. “You don’t feel the same level of helplessness. Studies have shown that when you give patients control over their own analgesia, they use less than when they have to depend on someone else to get pain relief.”

As for why cursing works better for women, Cope says: “That may be because cursing is a more emotionally laden activity for them,” she adds. “It might be interesting to take a population that swears as a matter of course — prisoners, say — and compare them to a group, such as nuns, who never swear.”

In the meantime, the study may just give the rest of us permission to just let go and explode with our favorite curse word when we bump our shins on the coffee table.

That would be fine by Stephens, “so long as there are no children around to hear you.”

Source (article): MSNBC

Source (picture): GHOTIERMAN

How the brain prevents verbal errors

It seems that our brain can correct speech errors in the same way that it controls other forms of behaviour. Niels Schiller and Lesya Ganushchak, NWO researchers in Leiden, made this discovery while studying how the brain reacts to verbal errors. This research can contribute to improvements in the treatment of people who have problems with speaking or in understanding language.

Our brain is fairly good at preventing mistakes in speech. Unfortunately it does make the odd mistake. George W. Bush, famous for his verbal errors, made the mistake of referring to weapons of ‘mass production’ instead of ‘mass destruction’. Former UK deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, had the same problem when he spoke of solving industrial disputes through ‘meditation’ instead of ‘mediation’.

The ‘f’ in spoon

To see how the brain reacts to these kinds of mistakes, Schiller and Ganushchak asked volunteers to indicate whether or not certain sounds were in the words matching different pictures. So, for example, when shown a picture of a spoon, the volunteer was required to indicate whether or not a ‘p’ was in the word. This does not usually give any problems, but under pressure, when given less time, the volunteers make more mistakes. They then indicate for example that there is an ‘f’ in the word ’spoon’ or that there is no ‘p’ in ’spoon’.

‘Oh-shit’ wave

The researchers showed that the brain responds to such faulty utterances with a specific electrophysiological signal. It was already known that this wave occurs when making behavioural errors, such as pressing a wrong button by accident. This wave, called Error-Related Negativity, is informally known as the ‘Oh-shit’ wave. The brain registers at once that something is amiss.

The most important conclusion of the study is that the way in which the brain uses language is not fundamentally different from how other actions such as grabbing or walking are carried out. The ‘Oh-shit’ wave registers errors so rapidly that they can sometimes be corrected in time. In this way you can stop yourself from falling down the stairs or saying the wrong thing.

Language in the brain

The results of this research provide a better understanding of the brain and how it processes languages. Such new insights into the mechanisms that affect speech can help to improve therapy methods for people with language impairments.

This study is part of a broader research project that attempts to analyse the working of the brain when using language. Niels Schiller set up the project in 2003 with a grant from NWO’s Vici programme. Lesya Ganushchak, who was a PhD student on that project, received a grant herself in 2008 from NWO’s Rubicon programme aimed at gaining experience abroad.

SOURCE: NWO.COM