This article is more than 1 year old

The Rise of Islamic State, Touch and I Am Radar

Where did ISIS come from? How do we feel? And some quantum fiction

Touch: The Science of Hand, Heart, and Mind

David J. Linden is an American professor of neuroscience and the author of The Accidental Mind. His book latest book, Touch, is about that most neglected of senses and is subtitled: The Science of Hand, Heart and Mind

Text, unless you are blind, is not the most tactile of mediums and there were times in this book when I was wondering if the subject wouldn’t be better as a documentary, but at least this way there is no dispute about the music.

David J. Linden has an open modern style and admits to provoking a non-scientific couple into a Fifty Shades Of Geometry S&M session with a compass point. We also learn of the author’s faux pas with an ear plug mistaken for a nipple …

We have guest star interventions from Tarantinoesque heroines ... but alongside the titillation comes the torment. We get jargon to the point of parody: “Recent work has shown that the primary somatosensory cortex can also be activated by caress and that the degree of activation can be modulated by social-cognitive factors like the perceived sex of the caresser, information that is presumably received from non-somatosensory brain regions…”

David J. Linden, Touch: The Science of Hand, Heart, and Mind

You can feel your own brain regions shutting down around this point. This book veers too much between the overfamiliar, Acronyms Anonymous and PhD LCD hell thanks to lines such as “novel drugs that selectively block MrgprC11 or NPPB receptors or GRP receptors …”

This is a layperson’s book which relies too much on sci-speak.

From Braille through sexual response and pain, we are given a tour of all things sensory, including a Pakistani family that feel no pain end up having predictably short lifespans. We are introduced to the biology of touch, cells with names like classical musicians I know I will almost certainly forget: Meissner, Merkel, Ruffini, Pacini – all beneath the skin and responsible for the sense of touch. David Linden goes on to describe the incredible work of Louis Braille who conceived and wrote his “touch” language whilst still a teenager.

We are then introduced to a woman who, following a dose of shingles, gets an itch on her head which she scratches down to the bone of the skull, which leads us into a digression into the science of itching and scratching. It is then explained why only some brain-damaged and schizophrenic individuals can tickle themselves while the rest of us have to look elsewhere.

Linden leaves us with a slushy new-age farewell: “Whether it involves the electric touch of romantic love, the unsettling feeling of being watched, the relief of pain from mindful practice or the essential touch that newborns need to thrive and communities need to cohere, the transcendent aspect of touch prevails when we understand that these feelings flow from the evolved nature of our skin, nerves and brain. Ultimately the biology of touch shows us that the natural is as deeply human and humane as the supernatural.”

This is a rather divided work in that it is part textbook, part Discovery Channel and veers between the two modes repeatedly. Linden takes us from his own bed into impenetrable paragraphs of acronyms and jargon. It is a subject which should be better treated on screen... just don’t mess up the soundtrack or overdo the graphics.

David J. Linden, Touch: The Science of Hand, Heart, and Mind book coverAuthor David J. Linden
Title Touch: The Science of Hand, Heart, and Mind
Publisher Viking
Price £16.99 (Hardback), £9.99 (eBook)
More info Publication web site
Next page: I Am Radar

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like