Zaki Jamil, Wager Tor D, Singer Tania, Keysers Christian, Gazzola Valeria
Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
Department of Psychology & Neuroscience, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA.
Trends Cogn Sci. 2016 Apr;20(4):249-259. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2016.02.003. Epub 2016 Mar 1.
Pain features centrally in numerous illnesses and generates enormous public health costs. Despite its ubiquity, the psychological and neurophysiological nature of pain remains controversial. Here, we survey one controversy in particular: the relation between nociceptive pain, which is somatic in origin, and empathic pain, which arises from observing others in pain. First, we review evidence for neural overlap between nociceptive and empathic pain and what this overlap implies about underlying mental representations. Then, we propose a framework for understanding the nature of the psychological and neurophysiological correspondence across these types of 'pain'. This framework suggests new directions for research that can better identify shared and dissociable representations underlying different types of distress, and can inform theories about the nature of pain.
疼痛在众多疾病中占据核心地位，并产生了巨大的公共卫生成本。尽管疼痛普遍存在，但其心理和神经生理本质仍存在争议。在此，我们特别探讨一个争议点：源于躯体的伤害性疼痛与因观察他人疼痛而产生的共情性疼痛之间的关系。首先，我们回顾伤害性疼痛与共情性疼痛之间神经重叠的证据，以及这种重叠对潜在心理表征的意义。然后，我们提出一个框架，以理解这些不同类型“疼痛”之间心理和神经生理对应关系的本质。该框架为研究指明了新方向，能够更好地识别不同类型痛苦背后的共同和可分离表征，并为有关疼痛本质的理论提供参考。
