Loggia Marco L, Mogil Jeffrey S, Bushnell M Catherine
McGill Centre for Research on Pain, McGill University, Montreal, Canada.
Pain. 2008 May;136(1-2):168-76. doi: 10.1016/j.pain.2007.07.017. Epub 2007 Sep 5.
Recent studies demonstrate that some brain structures activated by pain are also engaged when an individual observes someone else in pain, and that these empathy-related responses are modulated as a function of the affective link between the empath and the individual in pain. In this study we test the hypothesis that empathy-evoked activation in the pain network leads to heightened pain perception. After inducing in half of our subjects a state of high empathy for an actor and in the other half a state of low empathy towards him, we measured the sensitivity to heat stimuli of various intensities in healthy participants while they watched the actor being exposed to similar stimuli. Participants in the "high-empathy" group rated painful (but not non-painful) stimuli applied to themselves as more intense and unpleasant than did those in the "low-empathy" group. Positive correlations between state empathy scores and pain ratings further suggest that this perceptual phenomenon depends on the magnitude of empathic response induced in the participants. The effects were observed when subjects watched the model receiving either neutral or painful stimuli, suggesting that it is empathy itself that alters pain perception, and not necessarily the observation of pain behaviors.
最近的研究表明，一些被疼痛激活的脑结构在个体观察到他人处于疼痛状态时也会被激活，而且这些与共情相关的反应会根据共情者与疼痛个体之间的情感联系而受到调节。在本研究中，我们检验了这样一个假设：疼痛网络中由共情引发的激活会导致疼痛感知增强。在我们的一半受试者中诱导出对一名演员的高度共情状态，而在另一半受试者中诱导出对该演员的低度共情状态后，我们在健康参与者观看演员接受类似刺激时，测量了他们对各种强度热刺激的敏感度。“高度共情”组的参与者将施加在自己身上的疼痛（但非无痛）刺激评为比“低度共情”组的参与者更强烈、更不愉快。状态共情分数与疼痛评分之间的正相关进一步表明，这种感知现象取决于参与者中诱发的共情反应的程度。当受试者观看模型接受中性或疼痛刺激时都观察到了这些效应，这表明是共情本身改变了疼痛感知，而不一定是对疼痛行为的观察。
