Can he really feel your pain?
Here’s an article about Dr. Joel Salinas, a Boston neurologist with mirror touch synesthesia, which is the sensation, when watching other people, of perceiving that “whatever touches their body [is felt] on my own body as well and it’s kind of reflected as a mirror.”
Seems a little suspect; how do we know it’s not just having a lively imagination crossed with a great deal of empathy?—although in my experience, “a great deal of empathy” would be unusual among neurologists, who may self-select for lack of empathy due to the number of extraordinarily difficult and incurable progressive and debilitating diseases and conditions they almost inevitably see in their patients.
Here’s a more scientific definition of mirror-touch synesthesia:
Three conditions must be met in order to confirm the presence of mirror touch synesthesia. The first condition is that the synaesthetic response, which is defined as the sensation synesthetes feel after observing someone else being touched, should feel like conscious experiences. The second condition is that synesthetic responses are induced by a stimulus that normally does not induce that response. The third condition is that the synesthetic experiences must occur automatically, without conscious thought.
There is some experimental verification for the phenomenon. For example, subjects with the condition who watch someone else being touched on the cheek while also being touched on their own cheek experience a higher than chance number of errors as to which side it’s happening on, depending on what they’re watching.
It’s not really about pain, but more often about touch. Studies estimate its prevalence in the population as being around 1.5 to 2.5 percent. What’s more, the empathy thing I mentioned is not unrelated:
Mirror touch synesthetes have a higher ability to feel empathy than non-synesthetes, and can therefore feel the same emotions that someone else may be observed to feel.
The latter, however, is an intensification of what many or even most people experience when seeing someone who is crying, or anxious, or upset in some other way. To a certain extent we pick up on the feelings, both negative and positive, of people we counter all the time. Some of us are much less sensitive to it, some more. I’m usually (although not always) in that latter group, so much so that I sometimes have to purposely block it out in order to function in the world.
[NOTE: I was drawn to the headline because, back during the days of my neurological injuries and chronic pain, I used to go to a lot of orthopedists, neurologists, and neurosurgeons, and I used to fantasize about having some sort of machine I could put them in that would simulate the pain I felt so that they could feel it and understand, if only for a minute or so.]
I think it’s a load of poogie. Big words, “mirror touch synesthesia,” to make some enormous self-centered egos even bigger. And of course to suck in the gullible and really impress the hell out of them.
It reminds me of the same tactic in renaming fibromyalgia (itself a made-up with no medical basis as to “fibro-“) as myalgic encephalopathy. Myalgia simply means “muscle ache” but “encephalopathy” means a pathologic brain process. Again, zero evidence such exists.
So it’s all in the name. Few better places for pomposity than Boston, medically speaking.
Sounds like global warming – climate change – extreme weather – handwringing over imaginary dying polar bears to me.
I call it too much Stephen King syndrome.
When I first became ill, I had to wear gloves. Even bumping people would elicit a sensation that was too intimate (not a sexual thing, mind you… personal). Thinking my issue was mental illness, it was considered, by me, an allowance (the wearing of gloves). Now that I realize my problem was just a really bad heart, with a minor in ptsd, I am not sure what to think.
After five years, or so, I learned to control and so could remove the gloves. Even my then woman, just casually, touch was too much, initially. It was her companionship that brought me through that. Hmm… I had died twice by then. Perhaps neurological issues, or… something else. Not one of my deaths, but one of my near deaths, was through the use of a neuro-toxin… organic phosphate(s). That might have had something to do with it as well.
My empathy, and sympathy, now, depends on the person and situation. Some, who are guilty or party to their suffering, bother me not in the slightest. Those who played a part, even tangentially (say those who voted for many of the evils we are facing today) and who go on to pay a price, receive nothing. Those who suffer truly innocently can be a bit too unnerving.
Oddly, there is nobody I know (including myself) who cannot relate a personal experience which made no “rational” sense.
True, there are a lot of rational explanations for these non-rational experiences.
One of my own experiences included a predictive circumstance I shared with others, me not understanding the predictive aspect.
When the predictive circumstance occurred, it was (like the original experience) in the realm of amazing.
Yet I cannot bring myself to fully and confidentially believe it was extraordinary (although I lean in that direction).
Was there a piece of saran wrap on my foot? Or was my mind making that up?
Everything is context with a large dose of confirmation bias. And yet reality does not submit to explanation.
My totally unprovable intuition about life is that it is essentially narrative, a story. I think this is what Tolstoy says or is saying in War and Peace.
To me, freedom, whatever it happens to be, is the most desirable condition of life.
But as long as all of us disagree what consciousness means, or what it is, we will also disagree on what quality of life is important.
Oliver Sacks should be read by all as a common ground for discussion.
Or, the Acts of the Apostles, which provides more controversial common ground.
Doom at 9:14 PM – –
Fascinating post.
Just a side remark, the older I have gotten the less I have been concerned about culpability. Culpability is still very important to me, just not as conclusive.
Latest Ghoulish Planned Parenthood Video – Human Capital
http://commoncts.blogspot.com/2015/07/latest-ghoulish-planned-parenthood.html
Tonawanda,
Strange, as I age, culpability becomes absolutely paramount. Then again, I am coming to faith. In the end, that is all it is about, to a degree. At least as a Christian, if you don’t accept your guilt, then have your faith be strong enough to overcome it through faith in the Redeemer, you will not enter heaven. Perhaps you are typical secular, or churchianity type?
Ace has a content warning on the latest PP video: dismembering is involved.
http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=358116
Re mirror touch: I can’t feel that, but I get a sympathetic wince in my private parts when I see a man get racked. A fleeting physical OUCH. So I don’t watch a lot of those crazy videos….
I don’t mirror pain — but I can ‘mirror’ sexual pleasure.
Though I can’t claim I do so without touching.
We all have are limitations — and I know mine.
Neo said:
“… in my experience, “a great deal of empathy” would be unusual among neurologists, who may self-select for lack of empathy.”
Too much empathy is often counterproductive in a situation in which you are faced with human tragedy and misery on a daily basis. When my partner in my medical practice died of metastatic cancer it was like a closet door was opened and the emotions caused by all the horrible things I had seen over the years came tumbling out and smothered me. I almost had to quit my practice right then since the emotional trauma was so severe.
That has less to do with empathy and more to do with coping mechanisms.
Doom @ 12:38 AM – –
It is really not possible for me to be unaware of my own culpability for anything in my life, let alone to feel less culpable as I get older.
That is a function of conscience, which people have or do not have, or have in some degree or other.
The culpability of every other person has become less meaningful to me as I get older, oddly enough probably because of Jesus, even though I am agnostic.
I am an agnostic intensely interested in Jesus, who he was, what he meant (and means) and the significance of his life.
True, Heaven and Hell are beyond my comprehension, and I am absolutely aware of the suggested consequences of my ignorance.
In the meantime, I regard human beings in my life now with more a sense of empathy or sympathy than I did as a younger.
I respect your pov and hope you are right about your anticipated reward.