Our brains are capable of experiencing physical empathy in a variety of ways.  We rely on the intuitive, sensory-motor parts of the brain to relate to someone who is experiencing something that we have also experienced.  However, through the rational part of the brain, we are also able to feel empathy for someone feeling something we have not or are incapable of experiencing.

According to a new study from University of Southern California, even missing a limb will not stop your brain from understanding what it is like for someone else to experience pain in that limb.

Lisa Aziz-Zadeh, assistant professor at USC’s Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, explains how the brain produces empathy, even for those who differ physically from themselves in a paper published online by Cerebral Cortex.

Though they are engaged to differing degrees depending on the circumstance, it appears that both the intuitive and rationalizing parts of the brain work in tandem to create the sensation of empathy, said Aziz-Zadeh.

“People do it automatically,” she said.

For the study, the USC research team showed videos of tasks being carried out with hands, feet, and a mouth to a woman who had been born without arms or legs and also to 13 typically developed women. Videos showed activities that included mouth eating and a hand grasping an object.

Researchers also showed videos of pain, in the form of an injection, being inflicted on parts of the body.

As the volunteers watched the videos, their brains were scanned using functional magnetic imaging (fMRI); the scans were then compared, which showed the differing sources of empathy.

In another finding, Aziz-Zadeh discovered that when the women without limbs watched videos of tasks being performed that she could also perform but using body parts that she did not have, the sensory-motor parts of her brain were still strongly activated. For example, the woman can hold objects, but uses a stump in conjunction with her chin to do so instead of a hand.

However, if the goal of the action was impossible for her, then an additional group of brain regions involved in deductive reasoning were also engaged.

Source:   University of Southern California

<!– Related News Articles
–>
<!– Related Clinical Articles
–>

jQuery(‘.nrelate_default’).removeClass(‘nrelate_default’);

<!–

Brain and Behavior, General, Mental Health and Wellness, Neuropsychology and Neurology, Psychology, Research, pain

–>

The benefit of taking an approach that views a glass as being half full is now supported by neuroimaging of the brain.

Many experts have linked aging successfully to the “positivity effect” – a biased tendency towards and preference for positive, emotionally gratifying experiences.

A new study, published in the journal Biological Psychiatry, explains how and when this effect works in the brain.

German neuroscientists used neuroimaging to evaluate brain activity in young and old adults when they performed a specialized cognitive task that included supposedly irrelevant pictures of either neutral, happy, sad or fearful faces.

During parts of the task when they didn’t have to pay as much attention, the elderly subjects were significantly more distracted by the happy faces.

When this occurred, they had increased engagement in the part of the brain that helps control emotions and this stronger signal in the brain was correlated with those who showed the greatest emotional stability.

“Integrating our findings with the assumptions of life span theories we suggest that motivational goal-shifting in healthy aging leads to a self-regulated engagement in positive emotions even when this is not required by the setting,” explained author Dr. Stefanie Brassen.

In other words, looking for silver linings can strengthen positive feelings, enhance emotional well-being and increase emotional control in aging.

“The lessons of healthy aging seem to be similar to those of resilience, throughout life.” That is, when coping with extremely stressful life challenges, it is critical to realistically appraise the situation but also to approach it with a positive attitude,” noted Dr. John H. Krystal, the Editor of Biological Psychiatry.

Focusing on sort-term rather than long-term priorities is a positive strategy often deployed as people age and priorities shift, say the researchers.

In short, aging successfully occurs when an individual uses their brain to focus on the positive.

Source: Elsevier

<!– Related News Articles
–>
<!– Related Clinical Articles
–>

jQuery(‘.nrelate_default’).removeClass(‘nrelate_default’);

<!–

Aging, Brain and Behavior, Cognition, General, Health-related, LifeHelper, Memory and Perception, Mental Health and Wellness, Neuropsychology and Neurology, Personality, Professional, Psychology, Psychotherapy, Stress

–>

A new study expands our knowledge of what is happening in the body during an out-of-body experience.

Although out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are typically associated with migraine, epilepsy and psychopathology, they are quite common in healthy and psychologically normal individuals as well. And while much is still unknown, the new study links these experiences to neural instabilities in the brain’s temporal lobes and to errors in the body’s sense of itself — even in non-clinical populations.

Neuropsychologist Dr. Jason Braithwaite of the University of Birmingham in the U.K. has been investigating the underlying factors associated with the propensity for normal healthy individuals to have an OBE.

Braithwaite and colleagues tested a group of individuals, including some “OBEers,” for their predisposition to unusual perceptual experiences, and found that the OBEers reported significantly more of a particular type of experience.

The experience is known to be associated with neuroelectrical anomalies in the temporal lobes of the brain, as well as those associated with distortions in the processing of body-based information.

The OBEers were also less skilled at a task which required them to adopt the perspective of a figure shown on the computer screen.

These findings suggest that, even in healthy people, striking hallucinations can and do occur and that these may reflect anomalies in neuroelectrical activity of the temporal lobes, as well as biases in “body representation” in the brain.

The findings are published in the July 2011 issue of the journal Cortex.

Source: Elsevier

<!– Related News Articles
–>
<!– Related Clinical Articles
–>

jQuery(‘.nrelate_default’).removeClass(‘nrelate_default’);

<!–

Brain and Behavior, Health-related, LifeHelper, Memory and Perception, Mental Health and Wellness, Neuropsychology and Neurology, Personality, Professional, Psychology, Psychotherapy, Research

–>

Incoming search terms:

• Neurocan gene ( NCAN ) bipolar disorder