|
Study shows how patients and therapists
are 'wired to connect'
Physiologic measurements suggest
biologic component to feelings of empathic connection
BOSTON - February 13, 2007 - Empathy is well known to be
an important component of the patient-therapist relationship, and
a new study has revealed the biology behind how patients and therapists
'connect' during a clinical encounter. In the February Journal
of Nervous and Mental Diseases, researchers from Massachusetts
General Hospital (MGH) report the first physiologic evidence of
shared emotions underlying the experience of empathy during live
psychotherapy sessions. The researchers found that, during moments
of high positive emotion, both patients and therapists had similar
physiologic responses and that greater levels of similarity were
related to higher ratings of therapist empathy by patients.
"This research supports brain imaging data that shows humans
are literally 'wired to connect' emotionally," says Carl Marci,
MD, director of Social Neuroscience in the MGH Department of Psychiatry
and the paper's lead author. "There is now converging evidence
that, during moments of empathic connection, humans reflect or mirror
each other's emotions, and their physiologies move on the same wavelength."
As part of an ongoing study of the role of empathy in psychotherapy,
the MGH researchers videotaped therapeutic sessions of 20 unique
patient-therapist pairs. The patients were being treated as outpatients
for common mood and anxiety disorders in established therapeutic
relationships. The participating therapists practiced psychodynamic
therapy, an approach that uses the therapeutic relationship to help
patients develop insight into their emotions.
Throughout the therapy sessions, patients and therapists were 'wired
up' to record their physiologic responses using skin conductance
recordings. Skin conductance is a commonly used measure of the activity
of the sympathetic nervous system, which controls human arousal
and provides a physiologic context for emotional experiences. Following
the sessions, the videotapes were edited to focus on moments of
high and low physiologic concordance - that is, when patients' and
therapists' levels of nervous system activity were most and least
similar. Independent observers, blinded to the study's goals and
methods, reviewed randomly presented video segments to identify
the types of emotions being expressed by both patients and therapists.
The observers' data showed that both patients and therapists expressed
significantly more positive emotions during moments of high physiologic
concordance than during low concordance. In addition, patient's
ratings of therapist empathy corresponded to levels of physiologic
concordance during the therapy sessions. Overall, the findings suggest
that shared positive emotions and shared physiologic arousal contribute
to an empathic connection during psychotherapy.
"We were pleased to find evidence for a biological basis to
that feeling of connection," Marci says. "Taken together
with current neurobiological models of empathy, our findings suggest
that therapists perceived as being more empathic have more positive
emotional experiences in common with patients during the therapy
session." He adds another finding not reported in the published
report - that there was much less physiologic concordance when therapists
were talking than listening. "That suggests it is hard for
clinicians to be empathic when they are talking."
The researchers' next step is a longer-term study of how physiologic
concordance relates to empathy over the course of psychotherapy.
The ultimate goals of the project are to improve therapeutic techniques
and to develop resources for teaching medical students and clinicians
to be more empathic. Marci is an instructor at Harvard Medical School,
and his co-authors are Jacob Ham, PhD, now at Mt. Sinai Hospital
in New York, Erin Moran of MGH, and Scott Orr, PhD, of MGH and the
VA Medical Center in Manchester, N.H. The study was supported by
grants from the National Institutes of Health and the MGH Endowment
for the Advancement of Psychotherapy.
Massachusetts General Hospital, established in 1811, is the original
and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. The MGH
conducts the largest hospital-based research program in the United
States, with an annual research budget of nearly $500 million and
major research centers in AIDS, cardiovascular research, cancer,
computational and integrative biology, cutaneous biology, human
genetics, medical imaging, neurodegenerative disorders, regenerative
medicine, transplantation biology and photomedicine. MGH and Brigham
and Women's Hospital are founding members of Partners HealthCare
HealthCare System, a Boston-based integrated health care delivery
system.
Media Contact: Sue
McGreevey, MGH Public Affairs
Physician Referral Service: 1-800-388-4644
Information about Clinical Trials
|
|
|
