Empathy

An odd piece of information came my way: Empathy, an ability and willingness to relate to the emotions of others, increases when the hippocampus--the brain's region that modulates emotional responses--deteriorates. 

Thus empathy, studies show, can often be at its highest level in patients suffering from Alzheimers. Such patients are most susceptible to "emotional contagion," emotional contagion, a term that refers to the way we sense the emotions of others through their facial expressions, tone of voice or body language, and reflect them without being conscious of doing so.

Does this mean that an ability to remember, or be aware of the convergence of the past, present and future in a moment of time, obstructs empathy?

But then again, as we learnt from a story on empathy in the New Yorker, empathy isn't a wholly positive response to conditions of suffering in the world.

I'll take that up later...