PNAS New Discovery . . . Help ingenuity, can alleviate their own pain! Xie Xiaofei of Peking University and others used experimental data to prove this conclusion.

Inature altruism is highly valued by human society.what mechanisms can altruistic behavior benefit performers? In an emergency life-threatening situation, these problems become even more fascinating.intuitively, altruism does not seem to be an adaptive choice.on December 30, 2019, Xie Xiaofei's team of Peking University published a research paper entitled "altruistic behaviors relief physical pain" on PNAS. The study revealed how altruistic behaviors regulate cortical activity in pain related brain regions and affect the subjective experience of pain.altruism is highly valued by human society.from prehistory to civilization, altruistic behavior promoted human sharing and cooperation, and enabled group members to collectively survive various crises, such as food shortage and natural disasters.however, it is difficult for the executor to engage in altruistic behavior, which involves giving up their own resources (time, money, food, etc.).at the same time, the literature records the positive effects of altruistic behaviors such as voluntary service and prosocial expenditure on mental health and health.how to get these seemingly contradictory results? What mechanisms can altruistic behavior benefit the executor? In an emergency life-threatening situation, these problems become even more fascinating.intuitively, altruism does not seem to be an adaptive choice.the researchers found no difference in pain sensitivity between the altruism group and the control group (T & lt; 1).there was no difference in pain perception between the altruism group and the control group during the first TPT.in order to track their pain perception after altruistic (relative to control) activities, repeated measurement analysis of the variance of pain level was performed during the second TPT.this produced the main effects of group [f (1, 38) = 5.53, P = 0.024, η 2 = 0.127] and time [f (11418) = 23.75, P & lt; 0.001, η 2 = 0.385].Group x time interaction was not significant (F & lt; 1).specifically, the altruism group had less pain (M = 9.17, SD = 3.20) than the control group (M = 11.56, SD = 3.23), although both groups experienced increased pain throughout the TPT.these results indicate the analgesic effect of altruistic manipulation.engaging in altruistic behavior is costly, but it contributes to the health and well-being of those who perform it.this study explores how to understand this paradox.in two pilot studies and three experiments, the team demonstrated the analgesic effect of altruistic behavior.taking altruistic action can not only relieve acute physical pain in healthy adults, but also relieve chronic pain in cancer patients.using functional MRI, it was found that the brain activity of the anterior cortex of the dorsal cingulate and bilateral islands decreased significantly in response to painful shock after performing altruistic behavior.neural activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) mediates pain induced reduction in right insular insulation activation, and vmPFC activation is positively correlated with the meaningful degree of altruistic behavior of the performer.this study shows that the personal cost of helping others may reduce the discomfort of the performer.original link: