The popular catchphrase "I feel your pain" may actually hold some truth. When people see others being hurt, their brains react in much the same way--as if they themselves were being hurt, says a new study out of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.
Researchers measured study participants' brain activity while they watched videos of other people being hurt and then again after the subjects themselves experienced moderate pain. They found that similar areas of the brain were activated in the two situations.
The brain reacts to pain on two levels--the sensory level, which detects the type of sensation, and the emotional level, which indicates how badly the sensation feels, according to study author Sean Mackey. Mackey and his colleagues found similarities in brain activity between subjects' personal and empathic pain on both levels.
Fourteen subjects participated in the experiment during which they viewed videos of sporting injuries or car crashes and then allowed researchers to apply heated blocks to their forearms. Results were reported last week in Chicago at the annual meeting of the American Pain Society.
