Bodily Oddities

Mirror-touch synesthesia

Also called: Mirror-touch synaesthesia

About 1 in 60 people feel a touch on their own body when they watch someone else being touched. The brain system that mirrors other people's actions appears to be turned up too high.

Brain Nerves Rare ability Involuntary
Debunked myth

How common

About 1.6% of people Uncommon · 1–10% From screening studies of university students. Most people with it do not know it has a name.

Can you do this?

These are answers from visitors, not a study.

How it works

When you watch a person being tapped on the cheek, parts of your own touch cortex become slightly active. This happens in everyone and is part of how the brain understands other people’s actions3. In mirror-touch synesthesia the activity crosses a threshold and becomes a felt touch1. Some people feel it on the same side they see. Others feel it mirrored, as if they were looking in a mirror1.

The first case was reported in 2005 by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore and colleagues at University College London. Brain scans showed that watching touch produced stronger activity in the somatosensory cortex of the synesthete than in control subjects1. A 2009 screening study found the trait in about 1.6% of people1. Like other forms of synesthesia, it is stable over time and starts in childhood2.

The touch can be unpleasant. Some people with the condition avoid films with violence because they feel the blows.

A popular claim says mirror-touch synesthetes are unusually empathic. Early studies found slightly higher scores on emotional empathy questionnaires1. A larger 2016 study did not confirm this, and it found higher autism-spectrum scores in the group instead1. Feeling a mirrored touch is a sensory event. It is not the same as understanding another person. The idea that mirror-touch means super-empathy is not supported.

Sources and further material

  1. Encyclopedia Mirror-touch synesthesia Blakemore et al., 2005, first case. Banissy et al., 2009, prevalence. Baron-Cohen et al., 2016, empathy and autism scores.
  2. Encyclopedia Synesthesia
  3. Encyclopedia Mirror neuron
  4. Video Mirror-touch synesthesia explained YouTube search.
Brain Perception

Synesthesia

In some people, one sense triggers another. Letters have colours, sounds have shapes, or days of the week sit in fixed places in space. The pairings are automatic and stay the same for life.

About 4% of people
Brain Involuntary

Rubber hand illusion

Stroke a rubber hand and a person's hidden real hand at the same time, and within a minute or two the brain adopts the rubber hand as its own. It shows that your sense of your body is built moment by moment from sight and touch.

70–80% of participants
Nerves Reflex

Cutaneous rabbit illusion

A few quick taps at the wrist followed by taps at the elbow feel like a small animal hopping up the arm. The brain fills in taps between the two spots that never happened.

Works on most people tested
Nerves Reflex

Referred pain

Pain from an internal organ often shows up somewhere else, like the left arm during a heart attack or the shoulder from a gallbladder. The nerves from the organ and from that patch of skin share a line into the spinal cord.

Everyone