Our new column in Scientific American Mind is out today and it's about the illusory nature of pain, and how pain perception and severity varies with mood and circumstances.
Dennis Rogers keeps two USAF planes from taking off with strength or with insensitivity to pain?
Our new column in Scientific American Mind is out today and it's about the illusory nature of pain, and how pain perception and severity varies with mood and circumstances. The story centers around an unlikely subject, Dennis Rogers, "The World's Strongest Man". Can Rogers achieve his feats of strength through mutant abilities, or due to the ability to ignore pain and push through it, instead? As Seneca said, "“We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.”
The views expressed are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Stephen L. Macknik is a professor of opthalmology, neurology, and physiology and pharmacology at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. Along with Susana Martinez-Conde and Sandra Blakeslee, he is author of the Prisma Prize-winning Sleights of Mind. Their forthcoming book, Champions of Illusion, will be published by Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Follow Stephen L. Macknik on Twitter Credit: Sean McCabe
