I feel your pain

12 August 2004

Tania Singer, Professor Chris Frith and colleagues at the Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience have provided new insights into ‘empathic pain’ – the anguish felt when witnessing the suffering of others.

The group used brain imaging to explore the response of volunteers to a painful stimulus and to a second situation in which the pain was inflicted on the volunteers’ partners. The work suggests that two areas of the brain’s pain-processing systems can be distinguished – one involved in the physical sensations of pain and one responsible for the corresponding emotional experience.