The point is that we seem to think in sentences. It is very hard to imagine thinking about anything without framing the thought in words. When I wonder whether I am having a bad hair day, my mind’s eye sees the phrase swimming in front of it. It almost comes to my lips. In fact, much of what I ponder slips into vocal form, an unfortunate trait that has occasionally led me to be less tactful than I would have wished. But this habit also seems to confirm Noam Chomsky’s thesis that we think in words and grammar. Indeed, there is evidence that the part of the brain that deals with language is roped in to assist with mathematical tasks, suggesting the overarching presence of linguistic ability in all things neural.

However, a trio of brain-damaged patients have cast doubt on this widely accepted theory. Rosemary Varley, from Sheffield University, studied three patients with severe aphasia, a type of brain damage that leaves its sufferers unable to handle grammatical rules and therefore unable to commmunicate verbally or through writing. For example, the patients cannot distinguish between “the boy chased the girl” and “the girl chased the boy”.

Dr Varley found that the patients could tell the difference between similar mathematical expressions. For example, they could distinguish between 30/90 and 90/30. They could also handle arithmetic inside brackets, such as (90 - ((3 + 17) x 3)), that resemble the clauses inside sentences. They could not, however, decipher the sentence, “the man who killed the lion was angry.” The patients could also read numerals, but not written numbers, such as “three”.

The results, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, challenge the idea that language is the master ability required for all types of cognitive processing. The study also raises the possibility that aphasic patients could be taught a “words by numbers” language that would allow them to communicate with others.

• I HAVE often wondered what Uri Geller’s cutlery drawer looks like. I am not alone in pondering this. Richard Wiseman, a debunker of the paranormal, set up a study to look at whether psychokinetic metal bending ability — the ability to deform metal by thought alone — is all in the mind of the beholder.

  He reports that if an audience is told that a spoon is bending, a high proportion of them really believe that it is, even when it isn’t. Professor Wiseman, of Hertfordshire University, asked two groups of students to watch a videotape of a “psychic” bending a key. The psychic was actually a magician who bent the key using sleight of hand. The video ended with a 60-second close-up shot of the motionless key.

  One group was told by a voiceover that the key was still moving; for the other group, there was no voiceover. Forty per cent of those in the voiceover group said that the key was still bending, compared with 5 per cent of the other group.

  Professor Wiseman and his colleague Emma Greening report in the British Journal of Psychology that “even a relatively small amount of verbal suggestion can cause a large number of people to confidently report a psychokinetic metal bending after-effect”. Even sceptics turned out to be suggestible.

  The researchers conclude that eyewitness testimony about the genuineness of such phenomena is shaky and therefore cannot be used to support the existence of the paranormal.

  I’m afraid that Eric Bressler, from McMaster University in Ontario, brings bad news on the giggle front. Dr Bressler, who is studying the role of humour in sexual attraction, polled 150 students about what they meant by a “sense of humour”.

  He found that, for a woman, a GSOH means someone who makes her laugh. For a man, it means someone who laughs at his jokes. It’s enough to make you gag.

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