Compared to people who have a logical reaction to people’s emotions, empathetic people are found to have denser grey matter in specific areas of the brain.
New research has opened up questions that it may be possible to lose your empathetic ability over time or that it could even possibly be increased through training. These questions were raised because scientists have recently discovered they can physically see people’s empathetic ability on brain scans.
This research has added a great deal of information to the neuroscience field relating to emotion and has opened up questions with regards to two areas of empathy in particular: affective empathy and cognitive empathy. Compared to people who have a logical reaction to people’s emotions, empathetic people, or those with a strong emotional reaction to others, are found to have denser grey matter in specific areas of the brain.
BY CHRISTINA
Study: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811915004206
