Altruistic behaviors relieve physical pain
Altruistic behaviors relieve physical pain
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利他行为可以缓解身体疼痛
DOI：
10.1073/pnas.1911861117
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发表时间：
2020-01-14
影响因子：
11.1
通讯作者：
Xie, Xiaofei
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Wang, Yilu;Ge, Jianqiao;Xie, Xiaofei
从事利他行为是有代价的，但它有助于此类行为实施者的健康和幸福。本研究对如何理解这一悖论提供了一种观点。在2项试点研究和3项实验中，我们展示了实施利他行为具有缓解疼痛的效果。利他行为不仅缓解了健康成年人的急性身体疼痛，还缓解了癌症患者的慢性疼痛。通过功能性磁共振成像，我们发现个体实施利他行为后，在受到疼痛电击时，背侧前扣带皮层和双侧脑岛的大脑活动显著减少。右侧脑岛这种由疼痛引起的激活减少是由腹内侧前额叶皮层（VMPFC）的神经活动介导的，而VMPFC的激活与行为实施者从其利他行为中体验到的意义呈正相关。我们的研究结果表明，付出个人代价去帮助他人可能会使行为实施者免受不良状况的影响。
Significance For centuries, scientists have pondered why people would incur personal costs to help others and the implications for the performers themselves. While most previous studies have suggested that those who perform altruistic actions receive direct or indirect benefits that could compensate for their cost in the future, we offer another take on how this could be understood. We examine how altruistic behaviors may influence the performers’ instant sensation in unpleasant situations, such as physical pain. We find consistent behavioral and neural evidence that in physically threatening situations acting altruistically can relieve painful feelings in human performers. These findings shed light on the psychological and biological mechanisms underlying human prosocial behavior and provide practical insights into pain management. Engaging in altruistic behaviors is costly, but it contributes to the health and well-being of the performer of such behaviors. The present research offers a take on how this paradox can be understood. Across 2 pilot studies and 3 experiments, we showed a pain-relieving effect of performing altruistic behaviors. Acting altruistically relieved not only acutely induced physical pain among healthy adults but also chronic pain among cancer patients. Using functional MRI, we found that after individuals performed altruistic actions brain activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and bilateral insula in response to a painful shock was significantly reduced. This reduced pain-induced activation in the right insula was mediated by the neural activity in the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), while the activation of the VMPFC was positively correlated with the performer’s experienced meaningfulness from his or her altruistic behavior. Our findings suggest that incurring personal costs to help others may buffer the performers from unpleasant conditions.