The Matter of Empathy: How science proves humans need it.

According to Aina Puce, a neuroscientist in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at IU Bloomington, “[Touch] affects the blood flow to the brain areas that signal pain to your body. When someone holds your hand, it activates your touch pathways, which interfere with your pain pathways.”

Think of skinning your knee as a child. When a caring parent or friend held you afterward, it really did help the pain go away.

“There’s a lot of things like that in our bodies and brains that are important to learn,” said Puce. “And if we understand this area of research more thoroughly, we can make our lives better for each other.”

That altruistic notion of improving the lives of others is an underlying theme in Puce’s work. She’s dedicated over 40 years to studying why humans do what they do, an area of brain study called social neuroscience.

Puce recently took some time to chat about her work, illuminating the ways that electricity, brain function, and even blinking relate to one of our most important human emotions.

Here’s our conversation.

Brittany King: Let’s start at the beginning. What is social neuroscience?

Aina Puce: Essentially, it’s research on how the brain functions during social…