Crossed fingers – not only superstition, coming from the Middle Ages. British scientists have proved that fingers crossed allow people to dull the sensation of pain.
The superstitious people often cross their fingers and hope for luck – before a difficult exam, an important job interview or a fateful encounter. Use this gesture when given a promise, even knowing that it will not execute. Or when lying, but want to somehow justify itself.
The tradition of cross fingers appeared in the period of early Christianity and was used to runaway believers learned each other in times of persecution. Later, there was a superstition that the crossing fingers (an allusion to the Christian cross) will certainly save us from hell. In the XVI century Londoners began to use this gesture to ward off evil spirits. Even the British crossed fingers, when someone coughs or sneezes.
A new study by researchers from University College London shows that not all superstitions are unscientific. It turns out that the Christian tradition helps to confuse the brain and reduce pain. British researchers are advised to:
next time, hitting myself with a hammer on one hand, they simply scratch.
The researchers believe that their discovery will help patients suffering from chronic pain. According to Patrick Haggard, head work “painful sensations can be manipulated by moving some parts of the body in relation to the others.”
The basis of the experiment have known trick of the Swedish physician Thunberg. More than a hundred years ago Torsten Thunberg invented the illusion that causes phantom sensation of pain. Subsequently, the trick is called “grill illusion” and became extremely popular among young people.
The illusion is as follows: it is necessary to take two tanks – with hot and cold water, asked the participants to experience blindfolded and lowered his index and ring fingers in warm liquid and the average – in the cold.
After a while, people will start to feel the searing pain of the middle finger.
The same experiment can be repeated with sausages: it is necessary to take hot and cold meat products and, alternating with each other, neatly laid out on the table. Then ask participants to experience put his hand on sausages and wait until he cry out from the harsh and unpleasant pain.
The same pain we feel when we omit the arm in a snowdrift or substitute stiff the cold limbs under cool water. Painful feelings arise because the brain is tricked difference of temperature signals.
Scientists attached to the fingers experiment participants special equipment that creates a feeling of warmth and cold. The principle of operation repeats the “illusion of grilling.” According to most participants, they experienced pain. “This pain is not related to tissue damage,” – says Angell Marotta, one of the organizers of the experiment. “Pain – a perception that is only loosely connected with the actual feelings” – says Giandomeniko Yanneti, Professor.
The researchers found that when participants were crossed experience middle finger with a ring or index, the sensation of pain disappeared.
Soreness returned only if the authors of the study cooled the ring and index fingers of the subjects.
According to the authors, the human brain is not simply receives temperature data. He, processing signals from each finger, using their position in space, rather than the location at hand. Scientists believe that crossing your fingers will deliver not only on the phantom, but the real pain.
According to Patrick Haggard, earlier studies have shown that the sensation of pain plays an important role that the human brain is the body itself. An example would be illusory pain that occurs in amputees after surgery and with time passing, because the brain changes its view of the body.
The text of the study published in the journal Current Biology . 
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