Have you ever seen someone fall off a bike or stub their toe, and felt a chill run down your body even though it didn’t happen to you? That’s not just empathy. It’s a sensory phenomenon called vicarious touch or vicarious pain. Your brain is so connected to what you see, it can simulate the feeling of someone else’s experience in your own nervous system.
Neuroscience research shows that when we watch someone in pain, some of the same brain areas that light up when we feel pain become active. It's part of how we connect socially, but it also blurs the line between your body and someone else's. In fact, people who are more empathetic tend to have stronger vicarious responses. This all ties back to how multi sensory our brain really is seeing becomes feeling. It's one of the coolest (and creepiest) things about being human.
Keysers, C., Kaas, J. H., & Gazzola, V. (2010). Somatosensation in social perception. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11(6), 417–428. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2833
Hi Katty, yes I understand, sometime what someone does to themselves makes me cringe, so this was cool to read and now know why I feel like that.
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