Some people really do 'feel your pain'

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Some people looking at this image will feel pain in their leg too.

Vicarious pain is real and heart-felt, say Australian researchers, who have revealed the physiological changes that occur when a person literally feels someone else's pain.

The findings shed light on this extreme version of empathy, which is experienced by about 20 to 30 per cent of people, says pain researcher Dr Melita Giummarra of Monash University's school of psychological science and Caulfield Hospital in Melbourne.

"This is the first time physiological changes associated with vicarious pain have been measured," says Giummarra.

She was among the first researchers to demonstrate the proportion of healthy people who feel pain when they see another person in pain.

"People who are naturally prone to this will usually say they experience pain in the same body part the other person is experiencing it," says Giummarra.

While vicarious pain might seem to be a burden for those experiencing it, Giummarra says this is not necessarily the case.

"Most people who have this (and) are otherwise healthy say it's just a part of their normal experience, just like synaesthesia is just part of how some people interact with the world," she says.

In research presented at the recent 15th World Congress on Pain in Argentina, Giummarra and colleagues investigated nearly 20 women, around half of whom experienced vicarious pain.

The researchers used ECG to measure the participants' heart rates as they watched short video clips from football matches.

"Some of the clips had happy guys running around hi-fiving and kicking goals and some of them had players on the ground with quite painful injuries," says Giummarra.

Participants who were prone to vicarious pain reported feeling shooting sensations or dull aches when they saw footballers being injured.

"We had a range of injuries including those involving the head, ankles, knees and legs and most of the participants felt vicarious pain in the same body part."

Those prone to vicarious pain also demonstrated a sustained rise in heart rate while observing a footballer in pain.

Those who did not experience vicarious pain had an initial rise in heart rate but then the rate dropped to below normal.

The vicarious pain group's reaction was more akin to what happens when we experience our own pain, says Giummarra.

She says most people think vicarious pain is all in the mind but the findings show it is a real sensation.

Heart rate variability

Giummarra's preliminary work, incorporating research done since the conference presentation, has also found people experiencing vicarious pain have lower than usual heart rate variability when under stress.

This suggests that their parasympathetic nervous system is working differently.

One of the functions of the parasympathetic nervous system is to inhibit the arousal produced by our sympathetic nervous system when we see something threatening or unpleasant, such as the sight of someone in pain.

"When we watch someone in pain we are aroused and you might feel some sort of non-painful sensation," says Giummarra. "And that usually disappears quite quickly because we have this inhibition of our arousal."

"People prone to vicarious pain possibly don't have that inhibitory response. Their arousal is sustained and possibly gives rise to some sort of painful perception."

Giummarra says the physiological differences she has measured in people with vicarious pain are also consistent with patterns seen in those with anxiety-related disorders.

In the future Giummarra hopes to look at the role of vicarious pain in creating greater empathy among healthcare workers.

But she is also interested in studying the flip side of this.

"Although empathy is important in the interaction between clinicians and patients, we know that clinicians who are more empathetic are more prone to compassion fatigue or burn out," says Giummarra.

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