The anatomy of painIf this picture makes you feel uncomfortable, you feel empathic pain. This sensation activates the same brain regions as real pain.Previous studies have shown that the same brain structures—namely the anterior insula and the cingulate cortex are activated, irrespective of whether the pain is personally experienced or empathetic. However, despite this congruence in the underlying activated areas of the brain, the extent to which the two forms of pain really are similar remains a matter of considerable controversy.
To help shed light on the matter, neuroscientists, including Tania Singer, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, have proposed a new theory:
“We need to get away from this either-or question, whether the pain is genuine or not.”Instead, it should be seen as a complex interaction of multiple elements, which together form the complex experience we call “pain”. The elements include sensory processes, which determine, for example, where the pain stimulus was triggered: in the hand or in the foot? In addition, emotional processes, such as the negative feeling experienced during pain, also come into play.
“The decisive point is that the individual processes can also play a role in other experiences, albeit in a different activation pattern,” Singer explains – for example, if someone tickles your hand or foot, or you see images of people suffering on television. Other processes, such as the stimulation of pain receptors, are probably highly specific to pain.
The neuroscientists therefore propose comparing the elements of direct and empathetic pain: Which elements are shared and which, by contrast, are specific and unique to the each form of pain?
A study that was published almost simultaneously by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences and the University of Geneva has provided strong proof of this theory: They were able to demonstrate for the first time that during painful experiences the anterior insula region and the cingulate cortex process both general components, which also occur during other negative experiences such as disgust or indignation, and specific pain information – whether the pain is direct or empathic.
Source & further reading:
http://www.neuroscientistnews.com/research-news/anatomy-painPR:
https://www.mpg.de/10395332/pain-components #neuroscience #pain #research
