Mirror-touch synaesthesia: the role of shared ... - UCL Discovery

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Chapter 4
experience by contacting unknown researchers for a study. Therefore, it is difficult to
determine whether differences in the levels of openness to experience would extend to
larger randomly recruited populations of mirror-touch synaesthetes (i.e. whether
higher levels of openness to experience are more prominent in self-referred rather
than randomly sampled populations of synaesthetes).
General Summary
In sum, the studies presented in this chapter indicate that mirror-touch
synaesthetes show heightened levels of emotional, but not other components, of
empathy. In experiment 1, mirror-touch synaesthetes scored significantly higher on
emotional reactivity components of empathy, but not on social skills or cognitive
empathy. A control group of synaesthetes who experience other types of synaesthesia
but not mirror-touch did not differ from non-synaesthete controls, indicating that
differences in empathy were specific to this subtype of synaesthete. Experiment 2
extended findings in experiment 1 to demonstrate that the heightened emotional
reactivity observed in mirror-touch synaesthetes reflects other, rather than self-
orientated, emotional reactions. Mirror-touch synaesthetes were also shown to differ
from non-synaesthetes on an alternative measure to that used in experiment 1. On
both measures synaesthetes showed heightened affective empathy (but not cognitive
empathy), implying that sensorimotor simulation is important for some, but not all
components of empathy. Given that mirror-touch synaesthesia has been linked to
heightened sensorimotor simulation (Blakemore et al., 2005), these findings appear
consistent with accounts of empathy that posit a role for sensorimotor simulation
mechanisms (Gallese, 2006; Gallese and Goldman, 1998; Keysers and Gazzola, 2006;
Oberman and Ramachandran, 2007) and are consistent with functional brain imaging