Perfect Poise, Perfect Life
Bring your body into balance and revolutionise your life
By Noel Kingsley
Publisher Hodder Mobius
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Mossie bites and sensation

A strange but curiously interesting phenomenon has come to my awareness but sadly the such a theory (which it can only be from my perspective) remains frustratingly useless. It seems to be a fact that no matter how many mosquito bites one may receive at a time, one can only feel one at a time.

Now that we are entering the season of summer, of long sunny days, cool drinks, country walks, riverside picnics, boating, camping and general outdoor pleasuring, we also enter the season of the mosquito. In Scotland they are called Midges and they hover in clouds above your head with some who have the nerve, audacity and courage to make forays away from the pack to attach themselves to your neck, arm, chin, forehead, or your legs and whatever exposed part of your anatomy they can wheedle themselves into.

I understand from a good Russian friend that in Siberia there used to be a punishment for certain crimes that involved being hung up on a tree overnight during the mosquito season....and by morning you are most unlikely to be alive. They even eat their way through clothing. Mental note....not to visit Siberia, but if I do, not to do anything that might incur a sentence.

This 'phenomenon' also applies to pain and bruises. If we are unfortunate enough to have an accident or tumble where we receive bruising.....or worse.....and we have many injuries (It does not bear thinking about!); despite having quite a number of painful areas on our body, we actually only feel one of them at a time. We may feel one pain, then another, then another in sequence, but not all of them at the same time.

If any of you are neuro-scientists, then please do leave a comment and clarify this for me, but it's my impression that this links to the 'Executive Control' in our brain as I wrote about in my Multitasking post. To summarise without repeating, although we may think we are doing several things at one time, we are actually only able to 'think' of only one at a time. We are able to do parts of one activity 'unthinkingly' on automatic while our brain thinks of other things. We 'switch' from one thought to another. We think about several things sequentially, but not simultaneously. The switching from one 'thought' to another takes a fraction of a second, but the process of this switching results in two or more tasks more time, so it's possible that they may take longer than they would if they were done consecutively. However, it is often the case that one or more tasks we may undertake, do not require a great deal of thought, such as polishing shoes, washing the dishes, tidying up a mess in the office or home, so we can think of other things while doing so. If we were linked up to a computer though, we'd discover that our brain is only thinking of one activity or thought pattern at a time.

I believe it's the same with the mosquito bite situation. The pain or irritation is not felt in the problem area but in our brain. We may link the pain we feel from a bruise, cut or bite to an area of our body, but the pain is actually felt in our brain. And it is because of this that we are only able to 'think' of or feel one at any time. If we have a number of bites say, on our arm, then this may blur into one whole area of sensation, probably partly to do with the same nerves being irritated. However, if we also have bites on our legs, I don't believe that we'll be able to feel them at the same time as those on our arms!

We may have a great number of itchy little bites from those hungry and pesty little mossies, but if it's any consolation, we're only going to feel one of them at a time.

But I'm a great believer that prevention is better than cure......

Mental note.....to replace the mosquito repellent before we go on holiday. Oh, and buy some ointment, just in case.

Posted by Noël on June 10, 2008 8:38 AM | Permalink