“I’M TOUCHED, I really am.” What happens in the brains of people who sense physical touch when they see someone else being touched could shed light on how all of us feel empathy for others.
A study of 10 volunteers with the condition – mirror-touch synaesthesia – shows they are also especially sensitive to other people’s emotions. “They all scored higher in standard questionnaires to measure emotional empathy, which means they had better gut instincts for what others feel,” says Michael Banissy of University College London.
When Banissy’s team tested the volunteers’ cognitive empathy, which requires rational thought, their scores were the same as people without the condition,…
