Why It Hurts To See Others Suffer: Pain And Empathy Linked In The Brain

The Brain





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Study suggests the ability to experience pain may be the key to having empathy for others in pain. www.shutterstock.com

The human brain processes the experience of empathy – the ability to understand another person’s pain – in a similar way to the experience of physical pain. This was the finding of a paper that specifically investigated the kind of empathy people feel when they see others in pain – but it could apply to other forms of empathy too.