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What if your doctor’s brain felt your pain – from being pricked with a needle
all the way to surgery?
It might be tough for them to get anything done, huh?
Jean Decety, PhD, and his colleagues from the University of Chicago wanted to see whether physicians empathized with pain differently from the general population. They had a hunch that physicians’ brains would be better at regulating their emotional responses to pain, allowing them to stay focused on treatment.
Jean Decety, PhD, and his colleagues from the University of Chicago wanted to see whether physicians empathized with pain differently from the general population. They had a hunch that physicians’ brains would be better at regulating their emotional responses to pain, allowing them to stay focused on treatment.
Current models suggest that empathy to pain involves two stages: an
automatic, emotional sharing component, followed by a cognitive evaluation.
Decety and his team suspected that physicians would be better at modulating the
emotional component.
To find out, they gathered 30 participants: 15 physicians and 15 people with
no medical experience, who were matched to the physicians in age and level of
education.
Next, they showed each subject 120 pictures of different body parts. In half
the pictures, the body parts were touched by a Q-tip, and in the other half the
body parts were touched with a needle.
While the participants were viewing the pictures, their brain activity was
measured using EEG. Following the EEG, subjects were asked to rate the amount of
pain intensity and unpleasantness they thought the models in the photographs
experienced.
The researchers’ hunch proved true.
After viewing the images, control participants reported significantly higher
projections of pain intensity and unpleasantness than the physicians did.
Also, the physicians’ EEG results showed less activation than the control in
the regions of the brain responsible for empathy to pain.
This study suggests that physicians, whether due to their training or their professional experience, can regulate their emotions better than lay people when it comes to seeing people in physical pain. And better emotional regulation could reduce fear and alarm responses, and thus make problem solving easier.
This study suggests that physicians, whether due to their training or their professional experience, can regulate their emotions better than lay people when it comes to seeing people in physical pain. And better emotional regulation could reduce fear and alarm responses, and thus make problem solving easier.
This research has an important limitation: it uses a matched control, rather
than true random assignment into control and treatment. Maybe the brains of
people who become doctors simply are made of sterner stuff (though I doubt
it).
Of course, you can’t randomly assign physician status, so it’s difficult to
avoid this problem.
While most of our patients aren’t physicians, this study has serious
implications for practice. If a few years of training can change the way our
brains react to the pain of others, perhaps we can also change how our brains
react to our own pain. Imagine how helping patients regulate their fear responses could improve healing.
In fact, brain science has thousands of potential applications. To find out
how you can use the latest breakthroughs in neuroscience to help clients heal,
take a look at our webinar series on the New Brain
Science.
It’s free to attend. You just need to sign
up.
If you’d like to read the full study, it was published in Vol. 50 of
NeuroImage.
Have you ever helped a client with their brain’s emotional regulation? Please
share your experience in the comments below.
Source: National Institute for the Clinical
http://www.nicabm.com/nicabmblog/how-brain-training-helps-regulate-emotions/
http://www.nicabm.com/nicabmblog/how-brain-training-helps-regulate-emotions/
Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek
Robert Karl Stonjek
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