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You might think you've really felt someone else's pain before.
你以前可能认为自己真能感受到别人的痛苦。
Like when you ache for a loved one as they recover from surgery, or cringe as you watch a YouTuber fail at parkour.
就像当你所爱之人在手术后恢复的过程中，你会感受到他们的疼痛，或当你看到某个优客在跑酷中失败时，你会感到浑身不自在。
But you don't actually feel like you've been sliced open or rammed your groin on a railing.
但实际上，你并不是觉得自己的身体被切开或腹股沟撞到栏杆上。
And that's because what most people call sympathy pains aren't real pains.
那是因为大多数人所说的交感疼痛不是真实的疼痛。
Some people can truly feel other people's pain, though.
但是，有些人真能感受到他人的痛苦。
These interesting cases can help psychologists understand how pain and empathy work.
这些有趣的案例可以帮助心理学家了解疼痛和同理心的运作机制。
And it turns out even if you can't literally feel their sensations, your connections with people can still do some powerful things.
事实证明，即使你无法真正体会到别人的感受，你与他人的联结仍然可以做出一些颇具威力的事情。
There's no one place in the brain that experiences pain.
大脑中没有一个区域能体验疼痛。
Instead, it's a whole network known as the pain matrix.
相反，它是一个可以称之为疼痛矩阵的完整网络。
Different regions of the matrix deal with different aspects of pain.
矩阵的不同区域应对疼痛的不同方面。
For example, the primary somatosensory cortex is the region responsible for locating and discriminating the sensations you experience, so it deals with how intense the pain is and what kind of pain it is.
例如，初级躯体感觉皮层是负责定位和区分你所体验到的感觉的区域，因此它涉及疼痛强度和疼痛类型。
It's pretty objective: it tells you what, where, and how much.
它非常客观地告诉你是什么、在哪里，以及程度。
The anterior cingulate cortex, or ACC, and the insula, meanwhile, deal with your response to the pain.
同时，前扣带皮层，也叫ACC和脑岛处理你对疼痛的反应。
The ACC is tasked with taking sensory inputs and turning them into motor responses, like feeling heat on your palm and moving your hand away from a candle.
ACC的任务是获取感官输入并将其转化为运动反应，例如感受手掌上的热量并使手远离蜡烛。
The insula is the middleman between sensation and your emotional or cognitive state.
脑岛是感觉与情绪或认知状态之间的中介。
It can tell the difference between good and bad pain, like the way burning in your muscles feels kinda good when you lift weights but feels bad after an injection.
它可以分辨出好、坏疼痛之间的区别，比如当你举重时肌肉燃烧的感觉很好，而在打针后则会感觉糟糕。
And when you see other people hurt or think about their pain, some of this matrix does activate.
当你看到其他人受伤或想到他们的痛苦时，这个矩阵中的某些区域会激活。
Studies have found increased ACC and insula activity, for example.
例如，研究发现ACC和脑岛活动增加。
But you don't fully experience their pain.
但是，你并没有完全体验到他们的痛苦。
For example, a 2004 study of 16 cisgender heterosexual couples looked at the women's brain activity when they received pain, then again when they saw their partners in pain.
例如，2004年对16名同性恋异性恋夫妇进行的一项研究中，考察了女性在疼痛时的大脑活动，以及她们看到伴侣感受疼痛时的大脑活动。
And there was activity in the insula and the ACC in both conditions.
在两种情况下，脑岛和ACC都在活动。
But only when the women received pain themselves did the researchers see activity in the somatosensory cortex.
但只有当女性自己感受到疼痛时，研究人员才能看到躯体感觉皮层的活动。
That shows that while there are big similarities in the brain between experiencing pain and seeing someone else in pain, there's still a pretty clear divide.
这表明虽然经历痛苦和看到其他人痛苦在大脑中产生的活动存在很大的相似之处，但它们之间仍然存在明显的分歧。
That said, there are cases where people do seem to have actual sympathy pains.
也就是说，有些人似乎确实有交感疼痛。
People with acquired mirror-pain synesthesia literally feel pain when others are hurt.
患有后天镜像疼痛联觉的人在他人伤害时，确实会感到疼痛。
Synesthesia is a condition where a person can experience the stimulation of one sense when a completely different sense is being stimulated.
联觉是当一个人的一种感官受到刺激时，另外一个完全不同的感官会感受到刺激。
In people with acquired mirror-pain synesthesia, their pain matrix is activated by seeing or thinking about someone else's pain.
患有后天镜像疼痛联觉的患者中，通过观察或思考别人的疼痛可以激活他们的疼痛矩阵。
And we're not entirely sure how.
我们并不完全确定怎么会出现这种情况。
What we do know is that people usually develop the condition after traumatic brain injury or sensory loss, like an amputation.
我们所知道的是，人们通常会在创伤性脑损伤或感觉丧失，如截肢后，发生这种情况。
And studies on brain waves suggest their brains somehow take ownership of the pain.
对脑电波的研究表明，他们的大脑在某种程度上控制了疼痛。
It's likely that people with this condition have brains that process pain regularly.
患有这种疾病的人，大脑可能会经常处理疼痛。
The difference is that their brains don't inhibit the activity in certain areas to create that divide between directly experienced pain and the pain of others.
不同的是，他们的大脑不会抑制某些区域的活动，从而无法区分直接经历的疼痛和他人感受到的疼痛。
Understanding how that happens can give us a look behind the curtain at how the brain normally processes other people's pain.
了解这种情况的发生机制，可以让我们了解大脑如何正常处理其他人的疼痛。
And there's one more group who might experience true sympathy pains: the partners of pregnant people.
还有一个群体也可能会体验到交感疼痛：怀孕者的伴侣。
It's a controversial phenomenon known as couvade syndrome: basically, people claim to feel symptoms that are similar to those of a pregnant person they're close to.
这是一种被称为拟娩综合症的现象，它颇具争议性：基本上来说，人们声称感觉到的症状与他们接近的孕妇症状相似。
These could be anything from backaches and stomachaches to morning sickness and food cravings.
可能是从背痛、肚子痛，到晨吐和强烈的食欲等任何事情。
And the syndrome is controversial because the symptoms are usually pretty nonspecific, and they don't really last for a significant amount of time.
这种综合症具有争议性，因为这些症状通常都是非特异性的。而且，它们并没有真正持续很长时间。
So it's proven tough to study what's really going on in their brains.
因此，要研究这些人大脑中真正发生的事情被证明是很难做到的。
The apparent symptoms have been explained as everything from hormonal changes to a psychosomatic condition.
这些明显的症状可以用从荷尔蒙变化到心身疾病等各种表现进行解释。
Regardless, it does appear to be a real thing that some partners and even siblings of pregnant people have experienced.
无论如何，一些孕妇的伴侣，甚至其兄弟姐妹都真实经历过这种事情。
And figuring out how and why these loved ones experience pain and other physical symptoms without any apparent physical cause might help researchers better understand how those symptoms happen in the brain generally.
弄清楚这些亲人在没有任何明显的躯体原因的情况下，如何体验疼痛以及其他身体症状，有助于研究人员更好地了解这些症状在大脑中的发生机制。
If you're not a synesthete and no one around you is expecting, though, your ability to feel another's pain only goes so far.
如果你不是一个联觉者，周围人也没期待你能这样做，你感受他人痛苦的能力到目前为止也很一般。
This isn't a bad thing.
这并不是一件坏事。
That brain divide that keeps you from having a real sensory response to someone else's pain is probably pretty helpful from an evolutionary perspective.
从进化的角度来看，让你无法对别人的疼痛做出真实感官反应的大脑分化可能非常有用。
Having some reaction to someone else's pain helps you take care of your loved ones and make sure you don't suffer the same fate.
对别人的痛苦产生一些反应可以帮助你照顾所爱之人，并确保你不会惨遭同样的命运。
But actually experiencing the pain every time would be overwhelming.
但实际上，每次经历疼痛都会令人难以忍受。
So, when you "feel" a loved one's pain, you're not really feeling it.
所以，当你“感受到”心爱之人的疼痛时，你并没有真的感受到疼痛。
What you're feeling is empathy.
你感受到的是同理心。
If that's disappointing somehow, you can take heart in knowing that your connection to them is still powerful.
如果这在某种程度上令你感到失望，你可以放心，因为你知道你与他们的联结仍然强大。
Studies have shown that being there for the people you care most about really does make a difference.
研究表明，与你最关心的人待在一起确实会产生不同的结果。
For example, in 2017, researchers had 22 couples either hold hands or sit without touching each other while one partner experienced pain.
例如，在2017年，研究人员让22对夫妻手拉手或坐着不触碰对方，其中一位伴侣感受疼痛。
The participants holding hands rated the pain as significantly less intense than those just sitting without touching their partners.
手拉手的参与者认为疼痛的强度，明显低于坐着但不触碰伴侣者感受到的疼痛。
And the couples with the highest levels of empathy experienced the greatest pain-relieving effect.
同理心水平最高的夫妻，体验到了最大的疼痛缓解效果。
So, you might not feel their pain, but you can lessen it just by being there to hold their hand.
所以，你可能感觉不到他们的疼痛，但你可以通过握着他们的手来减轻痛苦。
Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow Psych!
感谢收看这一集的心理科学秀！
And thanks especially to Jasmine Larsonion for asking about sympathy pains, and all our patrons who voted for this question in our poll.
特别感谢Jasmine Larsonion询问有关交感疼痛的内容，以及在民意调查中给这个问题投票的所有赞助人。
You, too, can gain access to our questions inbox and help us decide which questions to answer by becoming one of our patrons.
你也可以访问我们的问题收件箱，成为我们的赞助人，帮助我们决定要回答哪些问题。
So if you have questions about the brain and how it works, or you want to find out how you can help support SciShow in general, you can learn more about becoming a patron at Patreon.com/SciShow.
如果你对大脑及其工作方式存在疑问，或者你想知道如何帮助支持科学秀节目，可以在Patreon.com/SciShow上了解更多有关成为赞助人的信息。
