Jessica Hamzelou, contributor
YOU might not have noticed, but the face a person makes when they sneeze or yawn is remarkably similar to the one they pull at orgasm. Similarly, being prevented from completing any of these three actions once they are under way is extremely frustrating. Are they linked in their function?
In Curious Behavior, neuroscientist Robert Provine discusses common yet seemingly strange actions, such as crying, tickling and yawning - subjects often overlooked by science. Beyond explaining how each of these actions work anatomically, Provine explores their functions, similarities and whether they might be linked by some higher, social purpose.
The most fascinating chapters involve descriptions of what happens when these behaviours become extreme. Take the 1962 outbreak of contagious laughter in Tanganyika, now Tanzania, which affected around a thousand people over several years. Then there is the story of a woman with an itch so severe she scratched through to her brain in her sleep.
Provine's investigations also reveal captivating insights into the mundane. Why are humans the only creatures to produce emotional tears, for instance, and what are they for? It may be that tears contain an ingredient that acts to soothe us, which is why we cry when we are sad. But the fact that teary eyes are universally recognised as a symbol of sadness suggests they have a role in communication, too. Then there is the finding that the scent of a woman's tears renders her less attractive to men. Until someone definitively works out what emotional tears are doing, it seems all we can really conclude is that tear-jerker movies are a bad choice for a date.
When it comes to yawning, Provine says there is scant evidence for the accepted wisdom that yawns give the brain an oxygen boost. But they have myriad other possible functions. As I experienced while reading the chapter, yawns are so contagious that just thinking about them is enough to set some people off. Such contagious yawns have been linked to empathy. Does this mean they have a social function? Might they synchronise group activity? Or do they just signal boredom?
These endless possibilities demonstrate how, while Provine's fun exploration of these topics raises interesting questions, it fails to answer many of them, simply because the science hasn't progressed far enough. So Provine encourages readers to start their own small-scale research.
Follow his advice, and Curious Behavior will leave you trying to yawn with clenched teeth, sneeze with your eyes open and noticing just how often you laugh at things that really aren't funny.
Book information
Curious Behavior: Yawning, laughing, hiccupping, and beyond by Robert R. Provine
Belknap Press
?18.95/$24.95
Come back, parasites, all is forgiven
Courtney Humphries, contributor
IN NOVEMBER 2010, science writer Moises Velasquez-Manoff went to a clinic in Tijuana, Mexico, to be infected with 30 flesh-burrowing hookworm larvae. This dubious act had a purpose: Velasquez-Manoff has eczema, asthma, allergies and alopecia universalis - an autoimmune disease that causes total body hair loss. This controversial new treatment purports to alleviate these conditions by infecting people with the very parasites humans have long fought to eradicate.
In An Epidemic of Absence, Velasquez-Manoff chronicles his experience with worm treatment. Eventually his allergies dwindle, fine hairs sprout and his eczema disappears. He also explores the underground community using parasites to try to treat asthma, Crohn's disease and autism.
He sprints adeptly through an exhaustive account of the immune system and our failure to grasp its complexities. We banished infections with sanitation and medicine, he says, but now have to face the consequences: overactive immune systems and a host of new conditions.
The examples of immunity out of balance are striking. In Karelia, an area split between Finland and Russia, for instance, the incidence of type 1 diabetes, coeliac disease and allergies is greater on the Finnish side where water is sanitised.
So does the immune system need the invaders it was designed to defend against? Velasquez-Manoff thinks so. The last 150 years of germ warfare were overkill, he argues, and now we need an "ecosystem restoration project" to bring back the microbes and parasites we evolved with.
Book information
An Epidemic of Absence: A new way of understanding allergies and autoimmune diseases by Moises Velasquez-Manoff
Scribner
$28
Science's greatest critic is no mood to recant
Graham Lawton, deputy magazine editor
WITH the Higgs in the bag and a NASA rover on Mars, all would seem to be tickety-boo in the house of science. But if Rupert Sheldrake is to be believed, these triumphs are merely final hurrahs. Despite all of its achievements, science - or the materialist world view that underpins it - is at crisis point.
This is familiar territory for Sheldrake, who has been writing materialism's obituary for the best part of 30 years - unarguably a period of great progress. Now 70, he is in no mood to recant.
Sheldrake's main argument is that while materialism was once useful, it has hardened into dogmas that are holding knowledge back. If science wants to become "freer, more interesting and more fun" it needs to abandon assumptions that, for example, matter is unconscious, the laws of nature are fixed, minds are confined to brains and psychic phenomena don't exist.
Sheldrake calls this "radical scepticism", but to me it looks like woolly credulousness. In chapter after chapter, he seizes on any hint that materialism isn't delivering, such as the failure to explain consciousness, while uncritically embracing all kinds of fringe ideas, from parapsychology and eastern mysticism to his pet hypothesis of morphic resonance.
He does land a few punches, notably when criticising entrenched methodological flaws such as the file drawer problem, in which negative results remain unpublished. But the overall impression is of an end-of-career album by a cultish band - full of familiar riffs that will satisfy loyal fans but with little chance of winning over any new ones.
Book information
Science Set Free by Rupert Sheldrake
Deepak Chopra Books
$26
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