The Empathy Switch
Recent empirical research from Taipai has validated anecdotal evidence that has long suggested that medical practitioners have a physiological capacity to disengage "natural" empathic responses to seeing others in discomfort, or in pain. This kind of neurophysiological research leads to any number of questions about the interplay between thinking and feeling.
Here is one of the interesting research findings:
Physicians registered no increase in activity in the portion of the brain related to pain, whether they saw an image of someone stuck with a needle or touched with a Q-tip. However, the physicians, unlike the control group, did register an increase in activity in the frontal areas of the brain--the medial and superior prefrontal cortices and the right tempororparietal junction. That is the neural circuit that is related to emotion regulation and cognitive control.
The research was focused on acupuncture practitioners exclusively. One question that emerges from this study is whether or not there is a similar, yet dysfunctional, capacity in sociopaths for instance to "turn off" empathy when they see others in pain. And of course that would lead to the possibility that such a switch might be turned on.
Here is a longer discussion of the study along with appropriate journal links.