Keep your friends close, but…

Surprising USC study shows that brains process the pain of villains more than the pain of people we like

2013-10-16

(Press-News.org) Counterintuitive findings from a new USC study show that the part of the brain that is associated with empathizing with the pain of others is activated more strongly by watching the suffering of hateful people as opposed to likable people.

While one might assume that we would empathize more with people we like, the study may indicate that the human brain focuses more greatly on the need to monitor enemies closely, especially when they are suffering.

"When you watch an action movie and the bad guy appears to be defeated, the moment of his demise draws our focus intensely," said Lisa Aziz-Zadeh of the Brain and Creativity Institute of the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. "We watch him closely to see whether he's really down for the count, because it's critical for predicting his potential for retribution in the future."

Aziz-Zadeh, who has a joint appointment with the USC Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, collaborated with lead author Glenn Fox, a PhD candidate at USC; and Mona Sobhani, formerly a grad student at USC and who is now a post-doctoral researcher at Vanderbilt University, on a study that appears in Frontiers in Psychology this month.

The study examined activity in the so-called "pain matrix" of the brain, a network that includes the insula cortex, the anterior cingulate, and the somatosensory cortices – regions known to activate when an individual watches another person suffer.

The pain matrix is thought to be a related to empathy – allowing us to understand another's pain. However, this study indicates that the pain matrix may be more involved in processing pain in general, and not necessarily tied to empathic processing.

Participants—all of them white, male, and Jewish—first watched videos of hateful, anti-Semitic individuals in pain and then other videos of tolerant, non-hateful individuals in pain. Their brains were scanned with functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to show activity levels in the pain matrix.

Surprisingly, the participants' pain matrices were more activated by watching the anti-Semites suffer compared to the tolerant individuals.

"The results further revealed the brain's flexibility in processing complex social situations." said Fox. "The brain uses the complete context of the situation to mount an appropriate response. In this case, the brain's response is likely tied to the relative increase in the need to attend to and understand the pain of the hateful person."

A possible next step for the researchers will be to try to understand how regulating one's emotional reaction to stimuli such as these alters the resulting patterns of brain activity.

### This research was funded by the USC Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy.

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Iraqi death toll from 2003-2011 war and subsequent conflict estimated at half a million

2013-10-16

A scientific study calculating Iraqi deaths for almost the complete period of the US-led war and subsequent occupation published in PLOS Medicine this week reports that close to half a million Iraqi deaths are directly or indirectly attributable to the conflict. A team of researchers from Iraq and the US led by Amy Hagopian, of the University of Washington, conducted a survey in 2000 households across Iraq and used the data to estimate death rates for the two year-period before the war began in March 2003 and the subsequent years until mid-2011. Estimates that extrapolate ...

Expert panel diagnosis for diagnostic test poorly described, experts not blinded to test under study

2013-10-16

Evaluation of diagnostic studies is often a challenge in diseases that are not defined by a specific test. Assessment of the accuracy of diagnostic tests is essential because they may be used to define who is considered to have a disease and receive treatment for it. However, measuring the accuracy of a diagnostic test requires an accurate gold standard, which defines which patients truly have and do not have the disease. Studies of diseases not defined by a specific test often rely on expert panels to establish the gold standard. In a systematic review and analysis of ...

Protective pathway identified to counter toxicity associated with Alzheimer's disease

2013-10-16

New research led by Marco Prado, PhD, of Western University has identified a pathway used by the brain to try to protect itself from toxicity that occurs with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Prado and his colleagues at the Robarts Research Institute and at the A.C. Camargo Cancer Center in Brazil have done extensive work on the role of prion protein. They found that toxicity of amyloid-β peptides, one of the major culprits in AD, can be decreased by preventing it from interacting with the prion protein. When a protein called stress-inducible phosphoprotein 1 (STI1) interacts ...

Penn researchers take first step toward a macular dystrophy gene therapy

2013-10-16

Vitelliform macular dystrophy, also known as Best disease, is one of a group of vision-robbing conditions called bestrophinopathies that affect children and young adults. Caused by inherited mutations in the BEST1 gene, these diseases cause severe declines in central vision as patients age. With a new study, University of Pennsylvania researchers report "encouraging" findings that mark the first clear step in developing a gene therapy that could prevent vision loss or event restore vision in individuals suffering from these conditions. The research, conducted in dogs, ...

Study finds high variability among primary care physicians in rate of PSA screening of older men

2013-10-16

"No organization recommends prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening in men older than 75 years. Nevertheless, testing rates remain high," write Elizabeth Jaramillo, M.D., of the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, and colleagues in a Research Letter appearing in the October 16 issue of JAMA. The authors examined whether PSA screening rates would vary substantially among primary care physicians (PCPs) and if the variance would depend on which PCP patients used. Using complete Medicare Part A and B data for Texas, the researchers selected PCPs whose patient ...

For patients with diabetes, angioplasty and bypass surgery lead to similar long-term benefits for quality of life

2013-10-16

For patients with diabetes and coronary artery disease in more than one artery, treatment with coronary artery bypass graft surgery provided slightly better health status and quality of life between 6 months and 2 years than procedures using drug-eluting stents, although beyond 2 years the difference disappeared, according to a study in the October 16 issue of JAMA. Although previous studies have demonstrated that coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery is generally preferred over percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI; procedures such as balloon angioplasty or ...

Medication taken for nausea during pregnancy not associated with increased risk of major malformations

2013-10-16

In an analysis that included more than 40,000 women exposed to the nausea medication metoclopramide in pregnancy, use of this drug was not associated with significantly increased risk of major congenital malformations overall, spontaneous abortion, and stillbirth, according to a study in the October 16 issue of JAMA. More than 50 percent of pregnant women experience nausea and vomiting, typically early in their pregnancy. The care of most women is managed conservatively, but 10 percent to 15 percent of those with nausea and vomiting will eventually receive drug treatment. ...

Researchers estimate 1 in 2,000 people in the UK carry variant CJD proteins

2013-10-16

The survey provides the most robust prevalence measure to date - and identifies abnormal prion protein across a wider age group than found previously and in all genotypes. An accompanying editorial says that although the disease remains rare, "infection" may be relatively common and doctors need to understand the public health measures that are in place to protect patients. Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) is a degenerative brain disease – often called the human form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or "mad cow disease." It emerged after widespread ...

New estimates give updated count of Iraq war deaths between 2003 and 2011

2013-10-16

During the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq from 2003 to 2011, for every three people killed by violence, two died as a result of the collapse of the infrustructure that supports health care, clean water, nutrition, and transportation, according to new estimates in a study from the University of Washington Department of Global Health published Oct. 15 in the open access journal PLOS Medicine. All told, the researchers estimate nearly a half million people died from causes that could be attributed to the war. Researchers from Johns Hopkins University, Simon Fraser ...

Moderate to severe psoriasis linked to chronic kidney disease, say experts

2013-10-16

The authors recommend closer monitoring for kidney problems in patients with 3% or more of their body surface area affected to help detect and treat signs early and suggest careful consideration of medications which may cause kidney disease in this at risk patient population. Psoriasis is a common, chronic inflammatory disease of the skin and joints that affects 2-4% of the general population. Increasing evidence suggests that psoriasis is associated with diabetes and heart disease independent of traditional risk factors. Some doctors think psoriasis may also be associated ...

Keep your friends close, but…

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: