#UnfairAndLovely: South Asians Fight Back Against The Stigma Surrounding Dark Skin 

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Empathy for others’ pain rooted in cognition rather than sensation

The ability to understand and empathize with others’ pain is grounded in cognitive neural processes rather than sensory ones, according to the results of a new study led by University of Colorado Boulder researchers.

The findings show that the act of perceiving others’ pain (i.e., empathy for others’ pain) does not appear to involve the same neural circuitry as experiencing pain in one’s own body, suggesting that they are different interactions within the brain.

“The research suggests that empathy is a deliberative process that requires taking another person’s perspective rather than being an instinctive, automatic process,” said Tor Wager, the senior author of the study, director of the Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory and Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at CU-Boulder.

A study detailing the results was published online today in the journal eLife.

Empathy is a key cornerstone of human social behavior, but the complex neural interactions underlying this behavior are not yet fully understood. Previous hypotheses have suggested that the same brain regions that allow humans to feel pain in their own bodies might activate when perceiving the pain of others.

To test this idea, the researchers compared patterns of brain activity in human volunteers as they experienced moderate pain directly (via heat, shock, or pressure) in one experimental session, and watched images of others’ hands or feet being injured in another experimental session. When volunteers watched images, they were asked to try to imagine that the injuries were happening to their own bodies.

The researchers found that the brain patterns when the volunteers observed pain did not overlap with the brain patterns when the volunteers experienced pain themselves. Instead, while observing pain, the volunteers showed brain patterns consistent with mentalizing, which involves imagining another person’s thoughts and intentions.

The results suggest that within the brain, the experience of observing someone else in pain is neurologically distinct from that of experiencing physical pain oneself.

“Most previous studies focused only on the points of similarity between these two distinct experiences in a few isolated brain regions while ignoring dissimilarities. Our new study used a more granular analysis method,” said Anjali Krishnan, the lead author of the study and a post-doctoral research associate in the Institute of Cognitive Science at CU-Boulder while the research was conducted. She is currently an assistant professor at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.

This new analysis method identified an empathy-predictive brain pattern that can be applied to new individuals to obtain a brain-related ‘vicarious pain score,’ opening new possibilities for measuring the strength of activity in brain systems that contribute to empathy.

The results may open new avenues of inquiry into how the brain regions involved in empathy help humans to relate to others when they experience different types of pain. Future studies may also explore the factors that influence one’s ability to adopt another’s perspective and whether it might be possible to improve this ability.

Black on Black

All of the animals above — and more — are “critically endangered.”

Harvard Grad Delivers Powerfully Poetic Speech On Overcoming Injustice

Six facts you didn’t know about the Sun

With summer on our doorstep, we thought it would be a good time to get to know the star that we so actively seek out at this time of year. The importance of the Sun in relation to the Earth has been recognized from time immemorial, but in recent years we’ve started to harness the Sun’s power, making it work for us by producing energy. Here we have six scientific facts about the Sun that you probably don’t yet know.

A solar hot water heater is over three times as efficient as solar cells (photovoltaic devices).

The Sun can supply all the people of the Earth’s yearly energy needs in one hour.

A solar cell cannot absorb low energy light rays (radiation) but can absorb high energy. To put in perspective, you wouldn’t be able to catch a ball if it were thrown extremely softly at you (it wouldn’t reach you); however, if the ball were thrown with a greater force towards you, you’d be able to catch it. This is the miracle of quantum mechanics.

The Sun can be used for air conditioning to make a house cooler by using a solar chimney.

A new type of solar energy device called a Solar (Power) Tower can trace its roots back to Leonardo da Vinci who envisioned the hot air rushing up a chimney could turn a pig on a spit.

It is possible to run a coal-fired power plant with solar power by using the Sun to make steam.

Image: Solar Flare by skeeze. Public domain via Pixabay.

Our new survey data is clear:

Most people have not received any education about what consent is, what it looks like, or how to do it. This needs to change. 

Education about consent is sexual assault prevention.

How the power of imagination can shape and redefine society

The key is to recognize that our imaginings must be in some way tethered to the world in order for them to be useful to us. When we let our imagination fly completely free, it can be of use to us, but only in the transcendent sense. 

The power of imagination is not to be underestimated. As Albert Einstein accredited a plethora of his pioneering scientific work to his imagination, Martin Luther King’s dream allowed him to convey his idea of a better, more tolerable society. These changes are made possible when the imagination drifts into an alternate space, considering the world as it is currently in its entirety, while dreaming of an improved version of it. 

Image: Hot Air Ballon by Cleverpix. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.

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