The Pain Matrix: How Labels Modulate Empathy

In an experiment we show you six hands on the screen and randomly pick one of them. That hand expands to the middle of the screen and then you see that hand get touched with a q-tip or Stab with a syringe needle. We can trust those two conditions to find those areas of the brain that are just involved in that difference. And as I mentioned before this is where we find a network that we summarize as the pain matrix. In the baseline case where there's no label your brain shows a lot of activity in this network This is the empathic response when you watch your in-group get stabbed.