Pain Experiments

I have an experiment for you.

Go outside, slam your hand in the car door, and see if your brain correctly triggers that unpleasant sensation known as PAIN.

(Or just trust me. That’s how it works.)

Your brain not only alerts you to the injury, but it even tells you things about the pain–how intense it is or if it’s throbbing or pricking, for example.

Now for Experiment #2.

Take someone you love outside and slam THEIR hand in the door.

(Hint: If you let the secret out of the bag ahead of time, they may not go along with it.)

But this is how you’d discover something IMPORTANT: when someone you LOVE gets hurt, your brain (in it’s anterior cingulate region) reacts the EXACT SAME WAY it would if YOU were in pain.

If they didn’t have the benefit of seeing what  happened, scientists watching your brain responses on a screen would have a hard time knowing who was hurt. Was it you or someone you loved?

They’d just know it was someone who mattered.

I think the fact that your loved ones’ pain shows up on your brainscan is God’s way of embedding Galatians 6:2 (Bear one another’s burdens) on our nervous systems.

By design, he physically connected us to each other’s pain and, in doing so, bound us to be invested in each other’s healing as well.