You've heard the expression, "I feel your pain," but some people actually do, including a doctor in Boston who is able to connect with his patients in a way most can't.
As CBS Boston's Dr. Mallika Marshall reports, Dr. Joel Salinas, a neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, has a rare condition called mirror-touch synesthesia.
"When I see people, I have the sensation of whatever touches their body on my own body as well and it's kind of reflected as a mirror," Salinas explained.
Salinas, like many with the condition, says he's been able to physically feel the pain of others since was a child, when he thought it was normal.
"When I was a kid, having these experiences where if I would see someone hug I would feel the hug on myself or if I would see someone get hit, I felt the sensation on me as well," he said.
The ability to experience several senses together creating a unique, compounded experience is referred to as synesthesia. It's believed to affect about one to two percent of the population. People with mirror-touch synesthesia may have a heightened sense of touch that overlaps with sight and/or hearing, triggering pronounced feelings of empathy.
Even without the condition, people who see others in pain may activate the same body response that would be used if they were in pain themselves. "Mirror neurons" help people mimic and identify with what they see.
Recent studies say that the mirroring reaction can be greatly heightened for those with mirror-touch synesthesia. Though researchers don't know exactly why, they have two main theories: people with mirror-touch synesthesia may have hyperactive mirror neurons that exaggerate the mimicking response, or they could possibly have difficulty distinguishing themselves from other people. For some who have the condition, the intense sense of empathy and physical adoption of pain can result in an overwhelming flood of emotions.
"They're kind of crushed by those sensations because it's too much and it's overwhelming," Salinas said. "They develop issues with anxiety and depression and essentially become shut-ins at times." Salinas says he sees his mirror-touch synesthesia as an asset and he's learned to focus his thoughts and use the feelings in his practice.
"I think it's empowered me to really connect with my patients. There's a wall that's torn down when you feel a lot of the sensations that your patients feel as well. It's like being aggressively put in somebody else's shoes."
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/boston-doctor-feels-patients-pain/
Courtesy of a friend
Fitzgibbon BM, Enticott PG, Rich AN, Giummarra MJ, Georgiou-Karistianis N,
ReplyDeleteBradshaw JL. Mirror-sensory synaesthesia: exploring 'shared' sensory experiences
as synaesthesia. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2012 Jan;36(1):645-57.
Abstract
Recent research suggests the observation or imagination of somatosensory stimulation in another (e.g., touch or pain) can induce a similar somatosensory experience in oneself. Some researchers have presented this experience as a type of synaesthesia, whereas others consider it an extreme experience of an otherwise normal perception. Here, we present an argument that these descriptions are not mutually exclusive. They may describe the extreme version of the normal process of understanding somatosensation in others. It becomes synaesthesia, however, when this process results in a conscious experience comparable to the observed person's state. We describe these experiences as 'mirror-sensory synaesthesia'; a type of synaesthesia identified by its distinct social component where the induced synaesthetic experience is a similar sensory experience to that perceived in another person. Through the operationalisation of this intriguing experience as synaesthesia, existing neurobiological models of synaesthesia can be used as a framework to explore how mechanisms may act upon social cognitive processes to produce conscious experiences similar to another person's observed state.
Ward J, Banissy MJ. Explaining mirror-touch synesthesia. Cogn Neurosci. 2015 May 13:1-16. [Epub ahead of print]
Abstract
Mirror-touch synesthesia (MTS) is the conscious experience of tactile sensations induced by seeing someone else touched. This paper considers two different, although not mutually exclusive, theoretical explanations and, in the final section, considers the relation between MTS and other forms of synesthesia and also other kinds of vicarious perception (e.g., contagious yawning). The Threshold Theory explains MTS in terms of hyper-activity within a mirror system for touch and/or pain. This offers a good account for some of the evidence (e.g., from fMRI) but fails to explain the whole pattern (e.g., structural brain differences outside of this system; performance on some tests of social cognition). The Self-Other Theory explains MTS in terms of disturbances in the ability to distinguish the self from others. This can be construed in terms of over-extension of the bodily self in to others, or as difficulties in the control of body-based self-other representations. In this account, MTS is a symptom of a broader cognitive profile. We suggest this meets the criteria for synesthesia, despite the proximal causal mechanisms remaining largely unknown, and that the tendency to localize vicarious sensory experiences distinguishes it from other kinds of seemingly related phenomena (e.g., non-localized affective responses to observing pain).
From a colleague: Mirror-touch synesthesia is a pseudo-stupidity that tarnishes the objective study of neurology.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, what is a “pseudo-stupidity”? A stupidity that is really not? “'Pseudostupidity' is the adolescent's tendency to overlook the obvious and inability to make appropriate choices. It results from the lack of experience with newly attained abilities to perceive many possibilities simultaneously.”
ReplyDeleteUnruly colleagues:
ReplyDeleteColleague 1: When you wrote that to me (see 7/29/15 12:54 pm), I felt angry empathetically. I must have E-mirror vision synesthesia.
Colleague 2 (author of 7/29/15 12:54 pm): I have camera obscura synesthesia. Feeling better now. Thanks!