Story highlights Dr. Joel Salinas has mirror-touch synesthesia

He says he can feel the pain of his patients

(CNN) Dr. Joel Salinas was in medical school the first time he saw a man die.

"Someone is doing compressions ... and as this is going on, I'm feeling the compressions on my chest as if it were happening on my body," Salinas said. "As he died, I felt this kind of hollow slipping sensation ... and after that I ran to the bathroom and threw up."

Salinas, a neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, has mirror-touch synesthesia, a neurological trait that affects two out of 100 people. It causes him to feel the emotional and physical sensations of others.

"It's essentially a glitch in my brain's wiring where I feel physically on my body what I see other people feeling. For example, if you are gasping for air, I feel like I'm gasping for air. If you're having a panic attack, I feel like I'm having a panic attack," he said.

Salinas sees it as a heightened form of empathy. The parts of the brain that are tied to "mirroring" the feelings of others are larger and more active than people without it, he said.

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