When we contrast the pain felt from the attack of a blunt or sharp object with that of lost love, it may be difficult to draw any comparison other than that they both hurt. However, research indicates that physical and social pain do have commonalities at the neurological level. The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) has been shown to activate with the conscious, aversive experience of both kinds of pain.
Anyone with an intact somatosensory cortex, posterior insula, and nociceptors (among other things) has the biological tools to process the sensory component of physically painful stimuli, but people with lesioned ACCs do not feel it as unpleasant or distressing. Dorsal ACC activity is correlated with self-reports of perceived unpleasantness as a result of painful stimuli, as well as upsetting social situations, as revealed by Eisenberger’s (2003) experiment that showed increasing dACC corresponding with increasing self-reports of distress in subjects who were excluded in a virtual game of catch. Additional evidence of the relatedness between social and physical pain comes from the fact that opiates and strong social support relieve both. There have also been numerous findings that the frequent experience of one type of pain predicts a heightened sensitivity to the other.
As with anything else, an evolutionary explanation for the origin of the ACC’s role as a neural alarm for pain might serve best: in any species, pain is a powerful motivator to escape pain because it threatens survival. Because mammalian infants require long periods of maternal care to survive, the pain of separation from the mother would be an adaptive way to prevent such an occurrence.
A final note on the implications of the anterior cingulate cortex and the perception of pain is that one doesn’t need to be the person receiving the painful stimulus to feel it. The ACC is also activated when a person watches his/her significant other receive an electric shock. This would not be possible without one of evolution’s most ingenious creations—mirror neurons.
Mirror neurons, which are found in different areas of human and primate brains, are activated when a person (or primate) performs an action and also when one observes another performing the same action. Mirror neurons are largely responsible for humans’ ability to accurately predict other people’s mental states and future behavior. They make it easy by producing the same neural representations that would exist if we were the ones experiencing the state, and in that sense we are experiencing it (to an extent.) The above example concerning pain is just one among many of these occurrences. Mirror neurons also explain why smiles, laughter, yawning, crying, etc. are contagious, why seeing a facial expression of disgust activates the same brain regions that smelling something disgusting would, and why seeing someone being touched activates the somatosensory cortex. Without mirror neurons, we could not feel what others are feeling, and the malfunction or lack of mirror neurons in autistic individuals may give evidence to the nature of their deficit in this respect.
The skill endowed upon us by mirror neurons is often referred to as "empathy," but this is a misnomer in my understanding. If a person tells a story of how some experience elicited feelings of sadness and the listener feels sad herself, she is sympathizing or identifying rather than empathizing. The same goes for the sharing of cognitive appraisals (as opposed to emotional response). If empathy is thinking or believing what another thinks or believes, it would be necessary for the empathizer to agree with that thought or belief, thus implying sympathy or identification. But empathy does not require the sharing of thoughts or feelings. It is rather understanding someone in his/her own terms. It’s appreciating another person point of view, regardless of how they differ from our own, which the Friths refer to as "mentalizing." Good empathizers can empathize with an ideology that completely conflicts with their own simply by giving the impression that the other person’s perspective as that person knows it is understood.
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3 comments:
The idea of mirror neurons & it's role with empathy is fascinating. As well as the idea of having a localized part of the brain that share both physical & emotional pain.
Neural 'alarm systems' for pain (both physical and social) exist for adaptive reasons. What happens now with the recent and rampant development of pain medications and anti-depressants (undoubtedly beneficial), when pain is meant to be obliterated rather than dealt with--what effect does this have on our management of pain?
Furthermore, in an even more abstract note... if the need to belong, coexist & avoid conflict is in the very substrates of our being, why do age-old 'conflicts' (namely, political/economic/religious) never seem to be resolved?
I have always found the differences between empathy and sympathy to be somewhat confusing. Yet, the way Matt eloquently describes empathy is intriguing. I would like to possibly talk more about empathy and its relationship to mirror neurons more in class today. Mirror neurons are fascinating! It makes communication so much easier.
Additionally, I found the reading in general to be quite fascinating in its discussion of the somatosensory cortex, posterior insula, etc. and their role in processing pain (both physical and mental).
Mirror Neurons and ‘theory of the mind’ are linked. To be able to project experiences of the self into another drastically affects our social capabilities. I found it interesting that theory of the mind and mirror neurons enable us as a social species to ‘feel’ for others. Our subject experiences also connect us.
Companionship and socialization is a fundamental quality of our lives; and loss of companionship can hurt as much as physically intense stimuli. Pain is aroused from social contexts (the process of heartbreak and mourning) just as much as our physical world (falling, or cutting oneself). It seems as if there are two selection pressures at hand— to protect our selves and prevent physical pain, and another other promoting socialization. The others in our lives become just as important as our own physical safety, and compromised on both fronts hurt just as much.
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