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Friday, February 20, 2004
Studies find pain is a matter of the mind
Brain reacts as much to another's hurt as to one's own
When it comes to feeling pain, some of it really is all in your head.
Key regions of the brain appear to react as much to expectations and empathy as they do to actual painful stimulation, new studies demonstrate.
The findings not only give fresh insight into how the human brain and nervous system work, but could open new opportunities for treating pain -- particularly pain for which there is no physical cause.
Some, but not all, of the same pain-sensitive regions of the brain were as active when women watched male partners receiving a shock to the hand as when the women themselves got the jolt, British researchers report today in the journal Science.
Likewise, activity in certain pain-sensing parts of the brain slacked off in subjects after an application of a cream they were told would lessen the pain of a mild electric jolt or heat to the skin, American scientists report in the same publication.
"The main point all this brings home is that the brain has mechanisms to directly control what we feel; it actively controls the flow of sensory information that results in our perceptions," said Dr. Kenneth Casey, a professor of neurology at the University of Michigan and a neurology consultant to the VA Health Care System in Ann Arbor.
At the University College London, Dr. Tania Singer and colleagues monitored brain activation in 16 women when a painful shock was given to each woman's right hand or that of a male partner.
These researchers found that only regions associated with subjective pain processing -- those that evaluate how unpleasant pain is and anticipate pain -- were active when the partner was subjected to the shock.
Those and other brain regions were active when the women themselves were administered shocks.
"This suggests we use emotional representations reflecting our own subjective feeling states to understand the feelings of others," Singer said.
"Presumably, our ability to empathize has evolved from a system for representing our own internal bodily states."
All the studies reported today are part of a larger field of research that explores how the mind creates a representation of what another individual is experiencing.
"Our human capacity to 'tune in' to others when exposed to their feelings may explain why we do not always behave selfishly in human interactions, but instead engage in altruistic, helping behavior," Singer said.
She is doing more research to see if similar brain reactions occur between people who don't have an emotional bond.
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