Washington, July 17 (IANS) Empathy for someone with whom you can directly relate is mostly generated by the intuitive, sensory-motor parts of the brain, while empathy for someone with whom you cannot directly relate to relies on the brain's rationalising part.


Your brain works hard to help you understand your fellow humans -- no matter how different they may be.

Even lacking a limb will not stop your brain from understanding what it is like for someone else to experience pain in one of them. It may, however, change the way your brain does so.

Lisa Aziz-Zadeh, assistant professor in occupational science at the University of Southern California, has mapped out the way the brain generates empathy, even for those who differ physically from themselves, reports the journal Cerebral Cortex.

Empathy for someone to whom you can directly relate - for example, because they are experiencing pain in a limb that you possess - is mostly generated by the intuitive, sensory-motor parts of the brain, according to Southern California statement.

However, empathy for someone to whom you cannot directly relate relies more on the rationalising part of the brain, according to Lisa's research.

Though they are engaged to differing degrees depending on the circumstance, it appears that both the intuitive and rationalising parts of the brain work in tandem to create the sensation of empathy, said Lisa. "People do it automatically," she said.