When she was 9 years old, Camilla would entertain her friends by jumping off her bed and landing directly on her knees. She said she liked to hear the crunching sound they made—just like popcorn.
Another time, Camilla spent an entire school recess period walking around on a broken leg, without so much as a whimper, says neuroscientist India Morrison of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. The child’s teachers didn’t believe Camilla when she said something was wrong, because she wasn’t sobbing or wailing in pain. Her father thought perhaps her leg needed massaging, but quickly realized the situation was much worse.
Camilla’s story is enough to make most listeners cringe in horrified sympathy, but her obliviousness to deep pain is linked to another effect that Morrison and collaborator Francis McGlone of Liverpool John Moores University hope will help elucidate how our bodies’ innate affinity for touch shapes our ...
