A group of researchers from Johns Hopkins University (USA) has scientifically shown that shaking hands with another person can relieve pain.
This is because when two people hold hands there is a kind of connection . This has nothing to do with the sentimental or affective plane, but there is actually a synchronization between some organs and, as a consequence, an exchange of information between bodies .
The results indicate that holding hands when we are in pain increases the coupling network between brains , which is correlated with the magnitude of analgesia and the empathic precision of the observer.
The aforementioned ” analgesia ” is defined by the Royal Spanish Academy as the lack or decrease of painful sensations , which does not affect the other senses. According to some theories, this can occur in three ways: local (affecting a small area of the body), regional (expanding the area of affection) or systemic (total).
As they point out, the mechanisms underlying analgesia related to social character are not clear. While recent research highlights the role of observer empathy in pain relief, the contribution of social interaction to analgesia is unknown.
Interbrain connections
The study consisted of observing the brain-brain coupling during pain with contact between people , thus evaluating the participation of intercerebral synchrony in pain relief.
For this, we had the participation of different romantic couples who were assigned a different task. For each couple, one person had to be the recipient of pain (target), while the other had to be simply an observer of the other’s condition (observer). The tests were also carried out with opposite simulations, for example, without using real pain and without contact between them.
Brain-to-brain coupling was estimated by a three-step multilevel analysis procedure .
The findings indicate that retention of the hand during pain management increases brain-brain coupling. This occurs in a network that primarily involves the central regions of the pain target and the right hemisphere of the pain observer. According to the researchers, the discovery “makes a unique contribution to our understanding of the physiological mechanisms of touch-related analgesia.”
Reference: Pavel Goldstein, Irit Weissman-Fogel, Guillaume Dumas and Simone G. Shamay-Tsoory. Brain-to-brain coupling during handholding is associated with pain reduction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 2018. DOI: /doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1703643115
