Wired To Connect

‘Wired To Connect’: Physiologic Measurements Suggest Biologic Component To Empathic Connection Between Patients And Therapists

Empathy is well known to be an important component of the patient-therapist relationship, and a new study has revealed the biology behind how patients and therapists “connect” during a clinical encounter. In the February Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) report the first physiologic evidence of shared emotions underlying the experience of empathy during live psychotherapy sessions. The researchers found that, during moments of high positive emotion, both patients and therapists had similar physiologic responses and that greater levels of similarity were related to higher ratings of therapist empathy by patients.

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