"感同身受"有科學依據

Ever literally felt somebody else's pain? You're not alone, with new research showing some people do have a physical reaction to others' injuries.

British researchers used brain-imaging technology to show that people who say they feel the pain of others have heightened activity in pain-sensing brain regions when they see someone else being hurt.

For the study, the researchers exposed 108 college students to images of painful situations, ranging from athletes suffering sports injuries and Patients receiving an injection.

Nearly a third said that, for at least one image, they not only had an emotional reaction, but also fleetingly felt pain in the same site as the injury in the image.

The researchers found that while viewing the painful images, both people who said they felt pain and those who did not showed activity in the emotional centers of the brain.

But those who said they felt pain showed greater activity in pain-related brain regions compared with the others, and as compared with their own brain responses to the emotional images.

"Patients with functional pain experience pain in the absence of an obvious disease or injury to explain their pain," Dr. Stuart Derbyshire of the University of Birmingham, one of the researchers, told reporters.

"We think this confirms that at least some people have an actual physical reaction when observing others being injured or expressing pain," Derbyshire said.

He noted that the people who reported feeling pain also tended to say that they avoided horror movies and disturbing images on the news "so as to avoid being in pain".

The findings were published in the December issue of the journal Pain.
你曾經“切身”感受到別人的痛苦是嗎？不止你一人這樣，一項最新研究表明，有些人對他人的傷痛確實會產生生理反應。

英國研究人員通過大腦成像技術發現，那些稱自己感受到別人痛苦的人在看到別人受傷時，自己腦部的疼痛感應區域的活動會加強。

研究人員讓108名大學生觀看一些痛苦場景的照片，如運動員經受運動創傷，以及病人接受注射等等。

近三分之一的調查對象稱，至少有一張畫面讓他們不僅在情緒上有反應，而且自己身體與畫面中人物傷痛的相同部位也有短暫疼痛感。

研究人員發現，在看這些痛苦畫面時，稱自己感到疼痛的和未感到疼痛的人在大腦的情感反應區域都有活動。

不過有痛感反應的人的大腦疼痛反應區域的活動比其他人活躍，與他們自己在看到情感性畫面的大腦反應相比也是如此。

其中一名研究人員、伯明翰大學的斯圖亞特•德比舍爾博士在接受記者採訪時說：“有‘功能性’疼痛經歷的患者並沒有明顯的疾病或創傷，但卻有疼痛感。”

德比舍爾說：“我想這一研究證明了至少有些人在看到他人受傷或表現出疼痛時，自己確實會有生理反應。”

他指出，那些有痛感反應的調查對象還有一個特點，他們會盡量避免看恐怖電影和新聞報道中可怕的畫面，“從而避免自己也跟着痛苦”。

該研究在《疼痛》雜誌12月刊上發表。

Vocabulary:

fleeting: passing quickly 轉瞬間的；短暫的