Study: People Literally Feel Pain of Others | LiveScience

Study: People Literally Feel Pain of Others
By Charles Q. Choi, Special to LiveScience

A brain anomaly can make the saying "I know how you feel" literally true in hyper-empathetic people who actually sense that they are being touched when they witness others being touched.
The condition, known as mirror-touch synesthesia, is related to the activity of mirror neurons, cells recently discovered to fire not only when some animals perform some behavior, such as climbing a tree, but also when they watch another animal do the behavior. For "synesthetes," it's as if their mirror neurons are on overdrive.

Study: People Literally Feel Pain of Others | LiveScience