Page |88 involves additional mechanisms beyond account for our ability to perceive and the sharing of emotion and includes self- understand the pain of others. In the case regulatory mechanisms to modulate the of pain, individuals are predisposed to observer’s experience of negative find distress of others aversive and learn arousal. Specifically, in order to to avoid actions associated with this understand the emotions and feelings of distress. This is even the case in many others in relation to oneself, second- mammalian species, including rodents. order representations of the other must For instance, rats that had learned to be consciously available and must not press a lever to obtain food would stop confuse the other with the self. The doing so if their response was paired medial and ventromedial prefrontal with the delivery of an electric shock to cortices are known to play crucial roles a visible neighboring rat (6). in deenupling Titst-person and third: Recently, a handful of functional Person nto icaetacio SE maintaining neuroimaging studies performed with representations of the other as distinct healthy human volunteers revealed that from the self'(5). the same neural circuits implicated in The regulatory component of processing the affective and motivational empathy, especially regulation of aspects of pain in oneself account for the internal emotional states and processes, perception of pain in others (7). In one is particularly relevant to the modulation study, participants in a magnetic of vicarious emotion and the experience resonance imaging (MRI) scanner either of empathy as well as sympathy. received a painful stimulus or, in other Empathy is unlikely to lead to helping trials, observed a signal that their behavior if the observer is incapacitated partner, who was present in the same by strong empathically evoked emotions, room, would receive the same stimulus. which is why emotional regulation is an First-hand experience of pain resulted in impor