Study: (Some) People Literally Feel Pain of Others

[brekin]

Study: People Literally Feel Pain of Others

http://www.livescience.com/1628-study-p ... -pain.html

A brain anomaly can make the saying "I know how you feel" literally true in hyper-empathetic people who actually sense that they are being touched when they witness others being touched.

The condition, known as mirror-touch synesthesia, is related to the activity of mirror neurons, cells recently discovered to fire not only when some animals perform some behavior, such as climbing a tree, but also when they watch another animal do the behavior. For "synesthetes," it's as if their mirror neurons are on overdrive.

"We often flinch when we see someone knock their arm, and this may be a weaker version of what these synesthetes experience," University College London cognitive neuroscientist Jamie Ward said.

Now scientists find these synesthetes possess an unusually strong ability to empathize with others. Further research into this condition might shed light on the roots of empathy, which could help better understand autism, schizophrenia, psychopathy and other disorders linked with empathy.

Blended experiences

Synesthesia is a condition where sensations that normally are experienced separately get blended together. The most common form is color-grapheme synesthesia, where a person experiences colors upon hearing or reading words. Others can taste words.

In mirror-touch synesthesia, when another person gets touched, the synaesthete feels a touch on their body. University College London cognitive neuroscientist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore discovered a mirror-touch synesthete in 2003 by a stroke of good luck.

"I was giving a talk and mentioned synesthesia, and that anecdotally there were reports that some people felt touches they only observed, and there was a woman in the audience who asked, 'Doesn't everyone experience that? Isn't that completely normal?'" Blakemore recalled.

Until that point, that 39-year-old woman did not realize her mirror-touch synesthesia was unusual. "It was something she's always had," Blakemore told LiveScience. In fact, a cousin of hers also has it, suggesting it runs in families.

When the woman faced someone and saw that person get touched on the left cheek, she felt it on her right cheek. On the other hand, if she stood next to somebody and that person got touched on the right side, she felt a touch on her right side.

The pain of horror films

Now Ward and doctoral student Michael Banissy reveal 10 more mirror-touch synesthetes they discovered among University College London students, as well as among people who possess other types of synesthesia. (The woman that Blakemore has 11 relatives with color-grapheme synesthesia, and that woman had color-grapheme synesthesia herself when she was younger.)

The researchers had the mirror-touch synesthetes take a questionnaire designed to measure empathy. For instance, they were asked to agree or disagree with statements such as "I can tune into how someone feels rapidly and intuitively."

The mirror-touch synesthetes scored significantly higher than people without synesthesia, findings detailed in the July issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience.

One mirror-touch synaesthete, Alice, said "I have never been able to understand how people can enjoy looking at bloodthirsty films, or laugh at the painful misfortunes of others when I can not only not look but also feel it." Another, Jane, said she felt her synesthesia is "a positive thing because I believe it makes me more considerate about the feelings of others."

Overactive mirrors

Banissy told LiveScience that "when we observe another person being touched, we all activate areas of our brain similar to those activated when we are physically touched." In mirror-touch synesthetes, this mirror system is overactive. The resulting high level of empathy they demonstrate supports the notion that people learn to empathize by putting themselves in someone else's shoes.

"It is extraordinary to think that some people experience touch on their own body when they merely watch someone else being stroked or punched. However, this may be an exaggeration of a brain mechanism that we all possess to some degree," Ward said.

UCLA neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni explained a better understanding of the mirror system could help shed light and treat autism, "which is well-known for not understanding the emotional states of others." Blakemore added such research could also help research into psychopaths, "where empathy goes wrong and people don't feel empathy in the normal way."

On a fundamental level, University of Parma cognitive neuroscientist Vittorio Gallese suggested this system "might be relevant for the ability to entertain an abstract notion of touch, such as upon watching objects touch each other."

[Searcher08]

Owwwwwwwwwww!

[Kate]

brekin,

Thanks so much for posting this. This is something I want to read more about, now that it's been brought to my attention.

From my own experience, I would say that this is a condition which exists on a spectrum of sorts.

I'm similar in many ways to the described "mirror-touch synesthetes" except that there is a lack of specificity to my physical response when seeing violence. Rather than having a specific sensation corresponding precisely to the point of injury to the body of an observed victim, the pain I feel when witnessing such events (and their recreation in cinematic fiction) is spread over a larger area of the body. And in some rare instances, rather than just "pain" per se, I develop nausea, which in extreme cases leads to vomiting. I remember the day many years ago, when I was at work where we were permitted to listen to the radio. When I heard a detailed report of what was done, first in the murder, then in the treatment of the corpse of Steven Biko in South Africa, I could barely make it to the rest room before vomiting. This sensitivity to the pain of others (psychological as well as physical) has been with me since my earliest memories as a toddler. And it's not just visual input that'll do it -- merely HEARING the cries of humans (or other animals) in great physical or emotional pain can bring about this reaction as well, although both visual and auditory input together create the most painful responses for me.

What accompanies this always (for me) is a racing heart. My heart rate can reach 130-150 beats per minute. This has always been true, although it's become quite exacerbated by events later in my life which have led to my being diagnosed with complex PTSD. So, how to tease out the original highly developed, automatic empathy now that it's become entwined with memory of my own multiple traumas? I wonder if the (seemingly) inherent sensitivity has made me MORE prone to develop PTSD???

I do know that my ability to view scenes of violence, while ALWAYS painful, has now become virtually impossible to withstand. I feel as though, quite literally, my heart will burst. And now that I have secondary lymphedema over more than half of my body (as a direct result of multiple physical traumas and the numerous orthopedic surgeries to repair them), when my heart races, the lymphedema instantly worsens, bringing instant worsening of nerve pain as the swelling presses on nerves. More frequent heart beats mean that lymph fluid also pumps out at a greater rate, but with no immediate way to drain normally (which requires daily specialized manual massage techniques to alleviate).

Synesthesia is also relevant in my case; however, the forms of "crossed-senses" are not at all visual (as in the example of hearing words as "colors"), but instead are auditory. For example, both taste and smell always register with me as having a high, low, or medium "pitch." I think if I owned a piano, I would be able to go over and find the EXACT NOTE a taste or olfactory sensation registers.

And just to ramble on a bit more, if y'all don't mind -- I, too, remember being shocked to discover that other people didn't experience the same intensity of feeling in regard to the pain of others. During adolescence I came to think that empathy was simply a direct function of IMAGINATION, and that those who lacked empathy lacked creative imagination.

This article really gives me food for thought.

Let me take this opportunity to thank ALL of the people who post here for including a WARNING when including links or embeds for audio/video clips containing GRAPHIC material. You considerate people have spared me pain, literally.

Some people who haven't known me well have thought I won't watch graphic news reports because I just don't want to know the painful truth, when in reality, just being told in general what's contained in a video has me imagining it ALL TOO WELL.

[Sweet Tooth]

I definitely have this condition - as well as limited auditory-to-visual synaesthesia - and agree with Kate that different people probably also have it along a spectrum of sensitivity. One side-effect of this condition is that it has made me extremely averse to confrontation. As a fat kid growing up, I had to fight for my life on an almost daily basis until junior high school. You can imagine how that made me feel.

An aside - while recuperating from a botched operation on my leg, I was medicated with massive doses of opiate pain-reliever for months. One thing I found about the opiates was that they reduced my sensitivity to the pain of others and empathy a great deal. Prior to being on those meds, I could NOT watch Jackass. That show would drive me crazy. On the meds, I could watch and chuckle along, without any of the aggravating anxiety that used to accompany it.

Odd, no?

[Nordic]

So ..... uh ...... what if they watch someone ..... well you know ...... ??

[Sweet Tooth]

I don't know about you, but I become sexually aroused. Perhaps this factors in to Kate's proposal that everyone has this to a certain degree, only on a spectrum, and some are more sensitive than others.

[Hammer of Los]

I can't bear to watch so called funny clips of real people suffering real painful injuries.

There is a lot of this material around these days, I notice. Perhaps there always was.

But people are precious and fragile, I don't at all like to see them damaged, and I don't typically find that funny.

I am more empathetic now in these regards than I used to be I think.

But isn't it amazing the way our minds are connected? But of course, our minds are connected. Without the connection, there would be no communication.

I still rather like to watch boxing though.

And I still love Laurel and Hardy, although I always flinch when that enormous heavy log falls on poor Stan's head.

[Kate]

Hammer,

Are you aware of an old US television show called "Candid Camera"? It always involved hidden cameras and "set-ups" to sucker in random persons who would then be manipulated into making fools of themselves for the delight of the viewing audience. I can't remember there being any kind of physical violence involved, just insults to the dignity of the person "caught" on camera.

From the time I wasn't much older than a tot, I just HATED that program. I didn't think it was funny at all. I didn't like the very idea of laughing at those poor schmucks, caught by the clever program production team, making asses of themselves for the viewers.

HOWEVER -- my older sister LOVED the show, and when she babysat me, she controlled the "dial" (how old-fashioned, eh?). This just happens to be the older sister who finds the slipping-on-the-banana-peel "humor" just hilarious. When I was about five or six years old, I tripped while running fast, one foot caught on a thin-but-protruding strip of asphalt situated between two large cement blocks making up our driveway. I totally gashed my knee badly as it slid across the kind of rough cement (with large pebbles and bits of rock) common to the East Coast region.

Inside I dragged myself, sobbing the whole way, where both parents lovingly cleaned the wound and bandaged me, giving me hugs, wiping away tears. Standing behind them, however, was this one older sister who could NOT contain her laughter. This was somehow hilarious to her. I looked at her like she was an alien, and as you can see, I remember the scene of her red-faced, out-loud, uncontrollable laughter to this day.

What strikes me as VERY weird is that she is the older sister who (in spite of a continuing fondness for physical, slapstick humor) turned out to be the only other sibling with a great deal of empathy! Who would have guessed? She's just about my best friend today.

Whereas my OTHER "big sister" who always carried herself with a demeanor of almost ostentatious sophistication, who would never dream of laughing out loud at someone's injury, even on a goofy TV program, ended up becoming one of the most emotionless and almost thoroughly COLD people I know. She's told me, in so many words, that she takes PRIDE in the fact that she's never cried while watching a movie. And then says in a derogatory voice to me, "but YOU are SOOOOO "sensitive," and "you're always so touchy-feely."

Amongst us siblings we have always as adults joked that it MUST have been the stork which brought us from separate orphanages. There's no WAY we are all related. Makes for very interesting once-yearly vacation time, renting a house all together (with spouses) in the very same East Coast beach town where our now-deceased parents took us (squabbling amongst ourselves, natch) for a week every summer.

Point being, if empathy has a serious genetic component, then I just don't get it. So many plural "realities" (including parents and a little brother, every person seeming terribly different from every other one) under the same roof. Is this what's called "individual personality"?

[Kate]

Sweet Tooth --

I have to take serious pain meds daily just to be able to get out of bed and walk, let alone do the kind of serious swimming which helps me so much. Unfortunately, it doesn't now temper the hyper-sensitivity; I wish it would. But then, I'm quite used to the same, steady dosage of the same meds for a very long time.

HOWEVER -- years ago before the most recent serious physical trauma, an accident which finally tripped the wire sending me into lymphedema, I remember DISTINCTLY an incident --

I had injured my neck and was taking just a few days' worth of prescription Vicodin so that I could go to work. Part of my job entailed chasing down engineers to get them to sign off on the technical documents I had written and edited for them...LITERALLY chasing. There was a guy everybody called, "Little Larry." He was only about 5'2" -- and in my normal everyday unmedicated personality, I wouldn't even DREAM about mocking anyone's appearance.

However, while on a good stiff dose of Vicodin, as Larry was literally starting to RUN away down an aisle through an open work area (he always ran away, hating to have to read over ANY kind of paperwork whatsoever), I found myself to my shock calling out, "HEY LARRY! It won't work!! MY LEGS ARE LONGER THAN YOURS!" People nearby burst out laughing, while I stopped in my tracks, mortified that I had actually SAID that. For that one moment, the influence of the meds was such that there was nothing on my mind but the hopelessness of the physics involved in his short legs trying to run away from me and my long legs.

So I think you've got something there, even if pain medication no longer has the same effect on me. If the researchers studying hyper-empathy have publicly available email addresses, why don't you drop them a line? It's an interesting angle of inquiry I think.