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Posted on Mar 12, 2018, 12 a.m.
Researchers at the University of Colorado and University of Haifa have conducted a study showing that holding hands with a significant other in pain will help to ease pain, as well as synchronize heart rate, breathing, and brain patterns will couple up too, as published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
According to the study the more empathy a comforting partner feels for their loved one in pain the more the brainwaves will sync, the more the brain waves sync the more the pain goes away, illustrating the importance of touch, adding to the increasing body of evidence to the body of research for interpersonal synchronization. This is the first study to look at brain wave synchronization as it applies to pain in the role of brain to brain couple touch induced analgesia healing touches.
The study involved recruiting 22 heterosexual couple participants in the age group of 23 to 32 years old who had been involved in relationships for at least one year, and consisted of putting the couples through several two minutes scenarios as electroencephalography caps were measuring their brain wave activity. Couple scenarios included sitting together while not touching; sitting in separate rooms; and sitting together holding hands; then repeated all of the scenarios with the woman being subjected to mild heat pain on her arm.
Results showed that just being in each other’s presence whether with or without touch was associated with some brain wave synchronicity in the alpha mu band wavelength associated with focused attention. Holding hands while she was experiencing pain increased the coupling the most. It was also noted that while she was experiencing pain if the couple wasn’t able to touch brain wave coupling diminished. Findings from this study matched findings from prior studies which found that respiratory and heart rate synchronization disappeared when the male partner was not able to hold the female’s hand to try and help ease her pain. Pain appears to interrupt couples interpersonal synchronization, and touch will bring it back.
Testing of the male partner’s levels of empathy revealed that the more empathetic he felt to her pain the more that their brain wave activity synced, the more their brain waves synced the more her pain subsided. How exactly this is happening is not understood, further studies are needed to be conducted to investigate the reasons. It is possible that empathetic touch making a person feel understood could be activating pain killing reward mechanisms in the brain.
It was not explored in this study whether the same effect would occur with same sex couples, or what would happen in other kinds of relationships.
Even though you may be lovingly expressing empathy for your partner’s pain, without touch it may not be communicated fully, never underestimate the power of simply holding hands.
Materials provided by University of Colorado at Boulder.
Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Journal Reference:
Pavel Goldstein, Irit Weissman-Fogel, Guillaume Dumas, Simone G. Shamay-Tsoory. Brain-to-brain coupling during handholding is associated with pain reduction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2018; 201703643 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1703643115
