Samar’s Reviews > Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science > Status Update

It is hard to contemplate the human appetite without wondering if we have any say over our lives at all. We believe in will— in the notion that we have a choice over such simple matters as whether to sit still or stand up, to have a slice of pie or not. Yet very few people, can voluntarily reduce their weight for long. The history of weight-loss treatment is one of nearly unremitting failure.

Yes, injury produces nerve signals that travel through a spinal-cord gate, but it is the brain that generates the pain experience, and it can do so even in the absence of external stimuli. If a mad scientist reduced you to nothing but a brain in a jar, Melzack says, you could still feel pain— indeed, you could have the full range of sensory experience.

striking. On average, female students reported pain at sixteen seconds and pulled their hands out of the ice water at thirty-seven seconds. Female dancers went almost three times as long on both counts. Men in both groups had a higher threshold and tolerance for pain— as expected, since studies show women to be more sensitive than men to pain..ballet dancers— a group distinguished by self-discipline, physical fitness

Indeed, the most important talent may be the talent for practice itself. K. Anders Ericsson, a cognitive psychologist and expert on performance, notes that the most important way in which innate factors play a role may be in one’s willingness to engage in sustained training. He’s found, for example, that top performers dislike practicing just as much as others do. (That’s why, for example, athletes and musicians usua