Is It Possible To Feel Empathetic Pain?
Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - 00:56
in Psychology & Sociology
Is it possible to share a pain that you observe in another but have never actually experienced yourself? A new study uses brain-imaging to try and answer this question and the research, published in Neuron, may provide insight into the brain mechanisms involved in empathy. Brain-imaging studies have shown similar patterns of brain activity when subjects feel their own emotions or observe the same emotions in others. It has been suggested that a person who has never experienced a specific feeling would have a difficult time directly empathizing with a person through a "mirror matching" mechanism that requires previous experience and would instead have to rely on a higher inferential processes called "perspective taking." read more
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