Page 37 - 20090506 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - May / June 2009

37 Feel Your Pain: Fact or Fiction I I Feel Your Pain: Fact or Fiction 37 I Feel Your Pain: Fact I Feel Your Pain: Fact or Fiction or Fiction by by Dr. Larry Dossey. Former Dr. Larry Dossey. Former Chief of Staff of Medical City Chief of Staff of Medical City Dallas Hospital, Author Dallas Hospital, Author Bill Clinton famously told Americans, "I feel your pain." Was the prez speaking truthfully or was he, as his detractors claimed, just an oily politician currying favor from suffering citizens? In the past few years, neuroscientists have discovered that individuals may indeed feel the pain of someone else. This conclusion is based on the discovery of "mirror neurons" in the brain, which fire both when a person engages in an activity or merely witnesses someone else who is engaged in the same action. Researchers suggest that when we see a homeless person begging on the street or an emaciated child in Darfur, we feel emotionally moved because we are hardwired to directly this was her first baby he assumed that delivery as a clinical tool in predicting when his patients share their experience. Thus many experts would be hours away. While raking leaves, he will deliver. contend that mirror neurons form the physical experienced an overwhelming feeling that he Dr. Kincheloe's experiences suggest that basis for altruism, empathy and compassion. had to go to the hospital. He immediately called physical sensations can mediate empathic Vilayanur Ramachandran, director of the Center labor and delivery and was told by the nurse that connections with others, beyond the range of for Brain and Cognition at University of everything was going fine; his patient was only the physical senses. These physical symptoms California-San Diego, says, "Mirror neurons five centimeters dilated and delivery was not are like psychic cell phones uniting a distant dissolve the barrier between you and someone expected for several more hours. individual who is in need with someone else. else." Ramachandran therefore calls them Even with this reassurance, the feeling A classic example, reported by the "Gandhi neurons." got stronger and Kincheloe began to feel an English social critic John Ruskin (1819-1900), Others disagree. Alison Gopnik, a aching pain in the center of his chest. He involved Arthur Severn, the well-known developmental psychologist at University of described it as similar to the feeling one has at landscape painter. Severn awoke early one California-Berkeley's Institute of Cognitive and sixteen years old and loses their first love -- an morning and went to the nearby lake for a sail. Brain Sciences, considers mirror neurons a achingly sad, melancholy sense. The more he His wife Joan, who remained in bed, was myth. She thinks their significance "is blown tried to ignore the sensation the stronger it grew, suddenly awakened by the feeling of a severe, way out of proportion." Huge ensembles of until it reached the point where he felt he was painful blow to the mouth, of no apparent cause. different kinds of neurons are involved in any drowning. By this time he was desperate to get Shortly thereafter her husband Arthur returned, cognition, she says. "The idea that a kind of to the hospital. He jumped into his car and sped holding a cloth to his bleeding mouth. He neuron alone could explain empathy or behavior away. As he neared the hospital he began to feel reported that the wind had freshened abruptly or self-consciousness simply makes no sense. better. When he walked onto the labor unit, and caused the tiller to hit him in the mouth, It's just as likely that those neurons are there was an overwhelming sense of relief. almost knocking him from the boat at the mirroring because people a re imitating each When he reached the labor and delivery estimated time his wife felt the blow. other and feeling empathy, not the other way area, the nurse was just walking out of his Mathematician-statistician Douglas around." Let's look further. patient's labor room. When she asked why he Stokes reported a similar instance in 2002. Experts say that in order for mirror was there, Kincheloe honestly admitted that he When he was teaching a course on neurons to fire and trigger empathy and did not know, only that he felt he was needed parapsychology at the University of Michigan, compassion, an individual must see the and that his place was with his patient. She gave one of his students reported that his father was suffering person. But this is a shortsighted view him a strange look and told him that she had just knocked off a bench one day by an "invisible (no pun intended), because it cannot account for checked the woman and that she was only seven blow to the jaw." Five minutes later his dad instances of profound empathy and compassion centimeters dilated. At that moment a cry came received a call from a local gymnasium where in which vision or any other physical sense from the labor room. He rushed to the room just his wife was exercising, informing him that she plays no role. in time to deliver a healthy infant. Afterward, had broken her jaw on a piece of fitness Consider the experience of Larry when the nurse asked how he had known to equipment. Kincheloe, MD, an obstetrician-gynecologist in come to the hospital after being told that The late psychiatrist lan Stevenson, of Oklahoma City. I received a remarkable letter delivery was hours away, he had no answer. the University of Virginia, has investigated from him, in which he described how After that day, Kincheloe started paying scores of comparable instances in which distant, premonitions and bodily sensations sometimes attention to his feelings. He's learned to trust emotionally close individuals experienced set the stage for compassionate, empathic them. Having experienced these intuitive similar physical symptoms. Most involved patient care. His experiences have led him to sensations hundreds of times, he routinely acts parents and children, spouses, siblings, twins, propose a new field he calls "intuitive on them. Usually by the time he gets a call from lovers, and very close friends. Again, the obstetrics." labor and delivery, he is already getting dressed common thread seems to be the emotional After completing his training in or is in his car on the way to the hospital. He bondedness and empathy experienced by the obstetrics and gynecology, Kincheloe joined a often answers the phone by saying, "I know. I separated persons. very traditional medical group and practiced for am on my way," knowing that it is labor and about four years without any unusual events. delivery calling him to come in. This is now Continued on Page 38 Then one Saturday afternoon he received a call such a common occurrence among the labor and from the hospital that a patient of his was in delivery staff that they use his chest sensations Dare to Believe - www.xzoneradio.com early labor. He gave routine orders, and since