There is a wonderful conversation between photographer Zack Bent and journalist Paul Schmelzer over at Eyeteeth. Bent speaks of a piece of his called Lachrymatory—a clear vial he uses to collect his tears and the tears of his wife and children. He explains:

Tears fall often in our house. Collecting them in the vial became a similar ritual to kissing a bump on the head. It became an act of love. This is a case where my art practice heightened the quality of our inter-family relationships and made physically manifest our maternal and paternal care giving … The title Lachrymatory comes from the ancient tear catching vials that were often filled by grieving widows. I collect a lot of tears as a father. The piece definitely memorializes mourning and weakness. The result of the collection is salt; an element of preservation.

Source: Eyeteeth

Image courtesy of Zack Bent. 

Forget aspirin: scientists at Oxford University are testing binoculars as painkillers. Their findings suggest that manipulating visual images of the body could help manage chronic pain, reports the Scientific American.

The researchers asked study participants to perform sets of movements using an arm that gave them chronic pain. During each exercise, the participants watched their hand through different binocular lenses. In one test, their hands were magnified to twice their size. In another, they were made to appear smaller. In each case, the subjects experienced greater pain as the size of their hands seemed to grow.

These subjective observations were buoyed by objective ones: Their fingers swelled more when perceived to be bigger.

The authors of the study aren’t exactly sure why the distorted images affect pain, but they hypothesize that the binoculars changed the subjects’ connection to their bodies. When their hands looked larger, they were more aware of owning them and thus felt pain more acutely.

Image courtesy of jlcwalker, licensed under Creative Commons.

When a Catholic gets hurt, an image of the Virgin Mary could help soothe the pain. New research suggests that “religious belief alters the brain in a way that changes how a person responds to pain,” Irene Tracey of Oxford University told Science News.

For the research, Catholics, agnostics, and atheists were subjected to a series of electric shocks, some while looking at a picture of the Virgin Mary and some without the image. Practicing Catholics perceived less pain when they were staring at the Virgin Mary, Science News reports, and displayed increased activity in an area of the brain associated with “emotional detachment and perceived control over pain.” Agnostics and atheists didn't show the same kind of neuro-activity, nor the perceived pain reduction.