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A new study has put some light on how the human brains evoke empathy when it sees some other person in pain.
The study which was proposed from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine at the Annual Meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping, have suggested that on seeing a person suffering in pain, the brain of the viewer stimulates the empathy systems. The viewer may not even be aware of the stimulation happening.
The researchers from the Mount Sinai School showed the people, the images of the limbs which were in pain and not in pain. Then the brains of these people were scanned at the same time with the help of the magnetic resonance imaging technique.
Under certain conditions, the subjects of study paid attention to check if the situation was painful while in certain other conditions, the images were paid more attention.
The researchers of this study observed that the insula, a small area of the brain, showed a response to the pain even while the subjects of the study were not paying attention to the conditions of pain. They also noticed that the anterior cingulated cortex of the brain was more important as far as the voluntary control related for evoking the empathy was concerned.
