Pain and empathy: From physical stimulus to social emotions.

Abstract

This article considers some aspects of empathy, commonly known as the ability to share the feelings of others. This sharing is essential for understanding aspects such as pain and suffering. Recent evidence indicates that perceiving the pain of others activates, in the observer, neural networks responsible for nociceptive processing, even without noxious stimulation being applied to the observer’s body. It is also discussed here how the social context, gender, and
even the administration of analgesics, can modulate the empathic perception of other people’s pain and the induction of prosocial behaviors. The implications of these empathic changes in the healthcare environment and in academic life are also considered.