I
feel your pain
By Katy Love
 With
a flip of a switch, Tania Singer triggered an electrical shock to
her female subject’s right hand. With a flip of another switch,
the subject’s husband received a similar shock. The woman,
seated next to an MRI scanner, could see nothing of her husband
except for his hand, but she watched a screen indicating whether
she or her partner was receiving a painless electrical shock or
one about as painful as a bee sting. The MRIs showed that when witnessing
her loved one in pain, certain parts of the woman’s brain
would become active, echoing a similar brain response when she herself
was in pain. This example of empathy showed that, in a limited sense,
the phrase “I feel your pain,” can be true.
Empathy – the act of knowing how others feel, feeling what
others feel and caring what others feel – has long been the
domain of philosophers and social scientists. This study, published
in Science in early 2004, marks the most recent example of a move
in empathy research from the field of social science to neurology.
Empathy is the English translation of the German word Einfuhlung,
which literally means “feeling into.” The idea was first
presented in 1873 by German theorist Robert Vischer as a term used
in aesthetics – the theory that dynamics in a work of art
could be used to suggest muscular and emotional attitudes in a viewer,
making them experience the related emotions. It wasn’t until
1903 that empathy entered the field of psychology thanks to philosopher
Theodore Lipps. He put forth the theory that perceiving an emotion
in another person can activate the same emotion in the viewer.
Over a century later, Tania Singer, a research fellow at the University
College of London, has the MRI scans that prove him right.
To study empathy, Singer needed to differentiate between a patient
feeling an emotion and a patient witnessing it in someone else,
to determine if the same neural circuits were involved. Scientists
are finding that it’s possible to be empathetic without fully
taking on the feelings involved. Though the brain does echo what
would occur if the feeling or stimulus was applied to the self,
it is not a true mirror image when it is applied to others.
Singer and her colleagues examined how much of another person’s
pain their subjects would feel – that is, how empathetic they
were to the pain. They chose 16 couples because they assumed that
couples would be more likely to be empathetic towards each other,
said Singer. The women... |
