Empathy for Pain and Touch in the Human Somatosensory Cortex

Abstract

Although feeling pain and touch has long been considered inherently private, recent neuroimaging and neurophysiological studies hint at the social implications of this experience. Here we used somatosensory-evoked potentials (SEPs) to investigate whether mere observation of painful and tactile stimuli delivered to a model would modulate neural activity in the somatic system of an onlooker. Viewing video clips showing pain and tactile stimuli delivered to others, respectively, increased and decreased the amplitude of the P45 SEP component that reflects the activity of the primary somatosensory cortex (S1). These modulations correlated with the intensity but not with the unpleasantness of the pain and touch ascribed to the model or the aversion induced in the onlooker by the video clips. Thus, modulation of S1 activity contingent upon observation of others' pain and touch may reflect the mapping of sensory qualities of observed painful and tactile stimuli. Results indicate that the S1 is not only involved in the actual perception of pain and touch but also plays an important role in extracting somatic features from social interactions.

Visual enhancement of touch and the bodily self

“…Additionally, viewing another person's hand may cause social effects that seeing a rubber hand would not. Recent studies, for example, have found that seeing someone else being touched activates primary and secondary somatosensory cortex in a manner comparable to actual tactile perception (Blakemore et al, 2005;Bufalari et al, 2007;Keysers et al, 2004), suggesting a tactile homologue of the human mirror system (cf. Rizzolatti & Craighero, 2004).…”

A biopsychosocial formulation of pain communication.

“…Subsequent neuroimaging techniques and designs, more focused on sensory-motor functions, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (Avenanti, Bueti, Galati, & Aglioti, 2005;Avenanti, Minio-Paluello, Bufalari, & Aglioti, 2006), magnetoencephalography (Cheng, Yang, Lin, Lee, & Decety, 2008), and electroencephalography (Bufalari, Aprile, Avenanti, Di Russo, & Aglioti, 2007;Jackson et al, 2007) demonstrated more consistently sensorymotor changes in relation with the mental representation of pain through pain observation.…”

Hearing others’ pain: neural activity related to empathy

“…Some studies showed that only the affective component of the pain matrix are involved in empathy for pain, and thus that only emotional, not sensory, representations of pain are shared between self and others (Saarela et al, 2007;Singer et al, 2004). On the other hand, previous transcranial magnetic stimulation studies (Avenanti et al, 2005;Avenanti et al, 2006) and somatosensory evoked potential studies (Bufalari, Aprile, Avenanti, Di Russo, & Aglioti, 2007) highlighted the possible sensorimotor aspect of empathy for pain. In recent years, subsequent fMRI studies supported these findings, demonstrating that both affective and somatosensory components of the pain matrix are activated during watching of complex visual scenes (Benuzzi et al, 2008;Costantini et al, 2008;Han et al, 2009;Lamm, Batson, & Decety, 2007a).…”