VOA标准英语2010年-Touch That Heals May be Your Own

If you've ever hurt yourself - bumped a leg or arm while walking, maybe - you might have instinctively¹ grabbed the place that hurt, and that seemed to ease the pain. Now, new research on pain and self touch explores why that is.

To study the phenomenon, European researchers used a variation of what's known as the thermal² grill³ illusion. It's a quirk⁴ of sensation that if you warm your second and fourth fingers and chill the middle finger, that cold finger will paradoxically feel hot, painfully hot.

 

That's useful for scientific experiments because the pain is real, but isn't caused by any actual harm.

In this study, people in the experiment put both hands through the thermal grill illusion, then touched the three middle fingers on the two hands together. That produced a big reduction in the sensation of painful heat, which earlier studies predicted.

But researcher Marjolein Kammers of University College London says the pain reduction came only when they touched their own fingers. When they were touched by another person who had also gone through the thermal grill experience, their finger felt just as hot.

And this was interesting, she said, because in terms of low-level feedback to the brain, you get similar touch and thermal feedback. The only difference is, is that it's not self-touch. And that made us realize that it's about integrating both hands into a more coherent representation of the body.

Kammers says pain can result from confusion in what she describes as the brain's representation of the body. She illustrates⁵ the concept with the often severe pain amputees report feeling in their missing limb.

The best example of what can happen when the body representation is disturbed is phantom⁶ limb pain, where one hypothesis is that the brain needs to be updated with a representation of the body. So the body has lost a limb, but the brain still represents it as being present. And this mismatch can cause pain.

In an interview via Skype, Kammers says if she and her colleagues get a better understanding of the power of self-touch to ease pain, it might become part of pain treatment.

That's the ultimate goal. That would be great if that would be possible.

And Kammers says she does think that may be possible. Her study on the effect of touch, specifically self-touch, on pain, is published in Current Biology.
 

1 instinctively   

adv.本能地

参考例句：

• As he leaned towards her she instinctively recoiled. 他向她靠近，她本能地往后缩。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He knew instinctively where he would find her. 他本能地知道在哪儿能找到她。 来自《简明英汉词典》

2 thermal   

adj.热的，由热造成的；保暖的

参考例句：

• They will build another thermal power station.他们要另外建一座热能发电站。
• Volcanic activity has created thermal springs and boiling mud pools.火山活动产生了温泉和沸腾的泥浆池。

3 grill   

n.烤架，铁格子，烤肉；v.烧，烤，严加盘问

参考例句：

• Put it under the grill for a minute to brown the top.放在烤架下烤一分钟把上面烤成金黄色。
• I'll grill you some mutton.我来给你烤一些羊肉吃。

4 quirk   

n.奇事，巧合；古怪的举动

参考例句：

• He had a strange quirk of addressing his wife as Mrs Smith.他很怪，把自己的妻子称作史密斯夫人。
• The most annoying quirk of his is wearing a cap all the time.他最令人感到厌恶的怪癖就是无论何时都戴著帽子。

5 illustrates   

给…加插图( illustrate的第三人称单数 )； 说明； 表明； （用示例、图画等）说明

参考例句：

• This historical novel illustrates the breaking up of feudal society in microcosm. 这部历史小说是走向崩溃的封建社会的缩影。
• Alfred Adler, a famous doctor, had an experience which illustrates this. 阿尔弗莱德 - 阿德勒是一位著名的医生，他有过可以说明这点的经历。 来自中级百科部分

6 phantom   

n.幻影，虚位，幽灵；adj.错觉的，幻影的，幽灵的

参考例句：

• I found myself staring at her as if she were a phantom.我发现自己瞪大眼睛看着她，好像她是一个幽灵。
• He is only a phantom of a king.他只是有名无实的国王。