Migralex Blog

Some people can really feel your pain

British researchers, Lance McCracken and Sophie Velleman report that “observing someone else in pain produces a shared emotional experience that predominantly activates brain areas processing the emotional component of pain.

Occasionally, however, sensory areas are also activated and there are anecdotal reports of people sharing both the physical and emotional components of someone else’s pain.” They presented a series of images or short clips depicting painful events to a large group of healthy people. Approximately one-third of them reported an actual painful experience in response to one or more of the images or clips.

Ten of these pain responders were then matched with 10 non-responders to take part in an fMRI (functional brain imaging) study. When shown emotional images not containing painful events the responders activated emotional and sensory brain regions associated with pain while the non-responders activated very little. They concluded that “These findings provide convincing evidence that some people can readily experience both the emotional and sensory components of pain during observation of other’s pain resulting in a shared physical pain experience.”

I sometimes see this in a spouse who accompanies a patient suffering from a severe headache. The spouse may look like he is also in pain and, in fact, judging by this study, he may indeed be in pain.

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