Is this creepy? I’m super relaxed, like way more so even, just watching a massage in progress than actually getting hands on skin. Dunno, but I thought I was the only one, maybe having some kind of synaesthesia variant. Turns out, not so much. New research from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden published in the Journal of Neuroscience claims that our brain responds the same way to watching someone getting a massage on video as it does IRL.“The aim was to understand how the brain processes information from sensual contact, and it turned out that the brain was activated just as quickly when the volunteers got to watch someone else being caressed as when they were being caressed themselves,” says researcher India Morrison. "Even when we are only watching sensual skin contact, we can experience its emotional meaning without actually feeling the touch directly.""[This] indicate[s] that our brain is wired in such a way that we can feel and process other people's sensations, which could open up new ways of studying how we create empathy," says Morrison in a release. "It’s important for us as people to understand the significance of different types of touch – to know whether two people are in a relationship or are about to start a fight." How sad and beautiful.Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv.
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