Empathy examined through the neural mechanisms involved in imagining how I feel versus how you feel pain

Empathic Responses for Pain in Facial Muscles Are Modulated by Actor's Attractiveness and Gender, and Perspective Taken by Observer

Although empathy for pain is an often studied phenomenon, only few studies employing electromyography (EMG) have investigated either emotional responses to the pain of others or factors that modulate these responses. The present study investigated whether the sex and attractiveness of persons experiencing pain affected muscle activity associated with empathy for pain, the corrugator supercili (CS) and orbicularis oculi (OO) muscles, in male and female participants in two conditions: adopting a perspective of “the other” or “the self.” Fifty one participants (27 females) watched movies showing situations that included the expression of pain, with female and male and more and less attractive actors under both conditions, while the CS and OO EMG were recorded. Perspective did not affect CS muscle activity, but OO muscle activity tended to be higher in women than men under the imagine-self condition. CS muscle activity, but not OO muscle activity, was modulated by the actors’ gender and attractiveness. CS muscle activity was stronger in response to the pain of less attractive than more attractive actors, and to the pain of female actors compared to male actors. Moreover, a positive correlation was found between empathic concern, as a trait, and CS muscle activity, but only in the imagine-self condition.

Childhood trauma affects processing of social interactions in borderline personality disorder: An event-related potential study investigating empathy for pain

Objectives: Patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) have difficulties in empathising with others and show disturbances in social interactions. Using a 'Social Interaction Empathy Task', we found that BPD patients judged neutral and psychologically painful conditions as more painful than healthy subjects. Here, we present the neural correlates underlying these differences in empathy for pain. Methods: Female BPD patients and healthy controls completed the 'Social Interaction Empathy Task' during EEG recording. Event-related potentials (ERP) were analysed for an early anterior component and a late latency positivity. Empathic abilities were assessed using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index and early aversive experiences were measured by the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ). Results: ERPs in the patient group matched the behaviour results and correlated with the level of personal distress and CTQ. In addition, ERPs of patients were predicted by childhood maltreatment and stress. Conclusions: Taken together, our findings indicate that the observed behavioural differences between patients with BPD and controls might be due to modulatory effects of empathic abilities on the evaluation of pain-related social stimuli, which are supposed to be based on childhood maltreatment.

Empathy in Facial Mimicry of Fear and Disgust: Simultaneous EMG-fMRI Recordings During Observation of Static and Dynamic Facial Expressions

Real-life faces are dynamic by nature, particularly when expressing emotion. Increasing evidence suggests that the perception of dynamic displays enhances facial mimicry and induces activation in widespread brain structures considered to be part of the mirror neuron system, a neuronal network linked to empathy. The present study is the first to investigate the relations among facial muscle responses, brain activity, and empathy traits while participants observed static and dynamic (videos) facial expressions of fear and disgust. During display presentation, blood-oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal as well as muscle reactions of the corrugator supercilii and levator labii were recorded simultaneously from 46 healthy individuals (21 females). It was shown that both fear and disgust faces caused activity in the corrugator supercilii muscle, while perception of disgust produced facial activity additionally in the levator labii muscle, supporting a specific pattern of facial mimicry for these emotions. Moreover, individuals with higher, compared to individuals with lower, empathy traits showed greater activity in the corrugator supercilii and levator labii muscles; however, these responses were not differentiable between static and dynamic mode. Conversely, neuroimaging data revealed motion and emotional-related brain structures in response to dynamic rather than static stimuli among high empathy individuals. In line with this, there was a correlation between electromyography (EMG) responses and brain activity suggesting that the Mirror Neuron System, the anterior insula and the amygdala might constitute the neural correlates of automatic facial mimicry for fear and disgust. These results revealed that the dynamic property of (emotional) stimuli facilitates the emotional-related processing of facial expressions, especially among whose with high trait empathy.

Neural Correlates of Empathy for Physical and Psychological Pain

Abstract. Empathy is known as the ability to share and understand someone else’s feelings. Previous research has either addressed the neural correlates of empathy for pain or social exclusion, but no study has examined empathy for physical and psychological (social) pain simultaneously. Forty-seven participants completed our novel “Social Interaction Empathy Task” during electroencephalogram (EEG) recording. Participants had to observe and rate the intensity of physical and psychological pain in social interactions from a first- and third-person perspective. At the behavioral level, subjects did not differentiate between the perspectives and rated physically painful scenarios as more painful than psychologically painful and neutral interactions. Psychologically painful pictures were also rated as more painful than neutral pictures. Analysis of event-related potentials (ERPs) revealed an early and a late response with a higher ERP response to physical and psychological pain compared to neutral interactions. Moreover, a significant difference emerged between the two dimensions of painful interactions. Furthermore, we found that the activity over frontal regions for discrimination of painful interactions was lateralized to the right hemisphere. Moreover, we detected significant correlations with the self-rated perspective taking ability. This suggests the psychological and physical pain qualities are processed differently but both are related to empathic traits. We further suggest that the right hemisphere may be specifically involved in the processing of empathy-related tasks.

Cognitive and Affective Empathy in Eating Disorders: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Background: Recent models of eating disorders (EDs) have proposed social and emotional difficulties as key factors in the development and maintenance of the illness. While a number of studies have demonstrated difficulties in theory of mind and emotion recognition, little is known about empathic abilities in those with EDs. Further, few studies have examined the cognitive-affective empathy profile in EDs. The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to provide a synthesis of empathy studies in EDs, and examine whether those with EDs differ from healthy controls (HC) on self-reported total, cognitive, and affective empathy. Methods: Electronic databases were systematically searched for studies using self-report measures of empathy in ED populations. In total, 17 studies were identified, 14 of which could be included in the total empathy meta-analysis. Eight of the 14 studies were included in the cognitive and affective empathy meta-analyses. Results: Meta-analyses showed that while total empathy and affective empathy scores did not differ between those with anorexia nervosa (AN) and HC, those with AN had significantly lower cognitive empathy scores compared to HCs (small effect size). Meta-analyses of Interpersonal Reactivity Index sub-scores revealed that AN had significantly lower Fantasy scores than HC (small effect size), indicating that those with AN have more difficulty in identifying themselves with fictional characters. Only 3 studies examined empathy in those with bulimia nervosa (BN) or binge eating disorder (BED). Conclusions: The lowered cognitive empathy and intact affective empathy profile found in AN is similar to that found in other psychiatric and neurodevelopmental conditions, such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD). These findings add to the literature characterizing the socio-emotional phenotype in EDs. Future research should examine the influence of comorbid psychopathology on empathy in EDs.

Brain pathways of pain empathy activated by pained facial expressions: a meta-analysis of fMRI using the activation likelihood estimation method

OBJECTIVE:

The objective of this study is to summarize and analyze the brain signal patterns of empathy for pain caused by facial expressions of pain utilizing activation likelihood estimation, a meta-analysis method.

DATA SOURCES:

Studies concerning the brain mechanism were searched from the Science Citation Index, Science Direct, PubMed, DeepDyve, Cochrane Library, SinoMed, Wanfang, VIP, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, and other databases, such as SpringerLink, AMA, Science Online, Wiley Online, were collected. A time limitation of up to 13 December 2016 was applied to this study.

DATA SELECTION:

Studies presenting with all of the following criteria were considered for study inclusion: Use of functional magnetic resonance imaging, neutral and pained facial expression stimuli, involvement of adult healthy human participants over 18 years of age, whose empathy ability showed no difference from the healthy adult, a painless basic state, results presented in Talairach or Montreal Neurological Institute coordinates, multiple studies by the same team as long as they used different raw data.

OUTCOME MEASURES:

Activation likelihood estimation was used to calculate the combined main activated brain regions under the stimulation of pained facial expression.

RESULTS:

Eight studies were included, containing 178 subjects. Meta-analysis results suggested that the anterior cingulate cortex (BA32), anterior central gyrus (BA44), fusiform gyrus, and insula (BA13) were activated positively as major brain areas under the stimulation of pained facial expression.

CONCLUSION:

Our study shows that pained facial expression alone, without viewing of painful stimuli, activated brain regions related to pain empathy, further contributing to revealing the brain’s mechanisms of pain empathy.

Impact of Aging on Empathy: Review of Psychological and Neural Mechanisms

Empathy in aging is a key capacity because it affects the quality of older adults' relationships and reduced levels are associated with greater loneliness. Many older adults also find themselves in the role of a caregiver to a loved one, and thus empathy is critical for the success of the caregiver-patient relationship. Furthermore, older adults are motivated to make strong emotional connections with others, as highlighted in the socioemotional selectivity theory. Consequently, reductions in empathy could negatively impact their goals. However, there is growing evidence that older adults experience at least some changes in empathy, depending on the domain. Specifically, the state of the research is that older adults have lower cognitive empathy (i.e., the ability to understand others' thoughts and feelings) than younger adults, but similar and in some cases even higher levels of emotional empathy (i.e., the ability to feel emotions that are similar to others' or feel compassion for them). A small number of studies have examined the neural mechanisms for age-related differences in empathy and have found reduced activity in a key brain area associated with cognitive empathy. However, more research is needed to further characterize how brain changes impact empathy with age, especially in the emotional domain of empathy. In this review, we discuss the current state of the research on age-related differences in the psychological and neural bases of empathy, with a specific comparison of the cognitive versus emotional components. Finally, we highlight new directions for research in this area and examine the implications of age-related differences in empathy for older adults.

Empathy for Pain: Insula Inactivation and Systemic Treatment With Midazolam Reverses the Hyperalgesia Induced by Cohabitation With a Pair in Chronic Pain Condition

Empathy for pain is the ability to perceive and understand the pain in the other individual. Recent studies suggested that rodents have this social ability. GABAergic system has receptors in the brain structures involved in emotional processes as well as in the insular cortex. This area has been described as an important key in modulation of pain and empathy. The present study has investigated the role of insula and its Benzodiazepine-GABAA system on social modulation of pain induced by cohabiting with a mouse submitted to sciatic nerve constriction, a neuropathic pain model. The insular cortex function was assessed by the structure inactivation (Experiments 1 and 2); the role of GABA system was evaluated by systemic treatment of midazolam (MDZ 0.5, 1, and 2 mg/kg) (Experiment 3); and the role of GABAA receptors of insula were studied by bilateral MDZ (3 and 30 nmol/0.1 μl) microinjections in the structure (Experiment 4). Male Swiss mice were housed in groups or dyads. On dyads, after 14 days of cohabitation they were divided into two groups: cagemate nerve constriction and cagemate sham (CS). After 14 days of familiarity, cagemates were evaluated on the writhing test. For group-housed, insula inactivation did not change nociception. For dyad-housed, cohabiting with a mouse in chronic pain increased the nociceptive response and the insula inactivation has reverted this response. Systemic MDZ attenuated nociception and intra-insula MDZ did not alter it. Our results suggest that cohabitation with a pair in chronic pain induces hypernociception, insula possibly modulates this response and the GABA system is also possibly involved, but not its insular mechanisms.

As Time Goes by: A rTMS Study on Age-Related Changes in Sentence Comprehension

It is well established that off-line sentence judgment tasks (oSJTs) typically rely on phonological working memory (WM), beyond specific linguistic processing. Nevertheless, empirical findings suggest that a juvenile level of performance in an oSJT could be associated with the recruitment of age-specific additional supportive neural network in healthy aging. In particular, in one of our previous study, healthy elderlies showed the additional activation of associative visual cortices when compared with young controls. We suggested that age-related hyperactivations, during an auditory sentence judgment task, might represent the neurofunctional correlate of the recruitment of compensatory strategies that are necessary to maintain a juvenile level of performance. To explicitly test this hypothesis we adopted repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). Twelve healthy elderlies and 12 young participants were engaged in an off-line semantic plausibility judgment task while rTMS was delivered over: (1) the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG; i.e., a core region of the WM network); (2) the precuneus; and (3) a Control Site (vertex). Results showed a significant main effect of Stimulation Site and a significant Group-by-Stimulation Site interaction effect. In particular, the rTMS stimulation of the LIFG slowed down reaction times (RTs) both in young and healthy elderly participants, while only healthy elderlies showed an increment of RTs during the stimulation of the precuneus. Taken together our results further support the idea that the maintenance of a juvenile level of performance in graceful aging may be associated with task-specific compensatory processes that would manifest them-selves, from the neurofunctional point of view, by the recruitment of additional neural supportive regions.

Pain Mirrors: Neural Correlates of Observing Self or Others' Facial Expressions of Pain

Facial expressions of pain are able to elicit empathy and adaptive behavioral responses in the observer. An influential theory posits that empathy relies on an affective mirror mechanism, according to which emotion recognition relies upon the internal simulation of motor and interoceptive states triggered by emotional stimuli. We tested this hypothesis comparing representations of self or others' expressions of pain in nineteen young healthy female volunteers by means of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We hypothesized that one's own facial expressions are more likely to elicit the internal simulation of emotions, being more strictly related to self. Video-clips of the facial expressions of each volunteer receiving either painful or non-painful mechanical stimulations to their right hand dorsum were recorded and used as stimuli in a 2 × 2 (Self/Other; Pain/No-Pain) within-subject design. During each trial, a 2 s video clip was presented, displaying either the subject's own neutral or painful facial expressions (Self No-Pain, SNP; Self Pain, SP), or the expressions of other unfamiliar volunteers (Others' No-Pain, ONP; Others' Pain, OP), displaying a comparable emotional intensity. Participants were asked to indicate whether each video displayed a pain expression. fMRI signals were higher while viewing Pain than No-Pain stimuli in a large bilateral array of cortical areas including middle and superior temporal, supramarginal, superior mesial and inferior frontal (IFG) gyri, anterior insula (AI), anterior cingulate (ACC), and anterior mid-cingulate (aMCC) cortex, as well as right fusiform gyrus. Bilateral activations were also detected in thalamus and basal ganglia. The Self vs. Other contrast showed signal changes in ACC and aMCC, IFG, AI, and parietal cortex. A significant interaction between Self and Pain [(SP vs. SNP) >(OP vs. ONP)] was found in a pre-defined region of aMCC known to be also active during noxious stimulation. These findings demonstrate that the observation of one's own and others' facial expressions share a largely common neural network, but self-related stimuli induce generally higher activations. In line with our hypothesis, selectively greater activity for self pain-related stimuli was found in aMCC, a medial-wall region critical for pain perception and recognition.

Competitive Intensity Modulates the Pain Empathy Response: An Event-Related Potentials Study

Previous studies have widely reported that competition modulates an individual's ability to empathize with pain experienced by others. What remains to be clarified, however, is how modulations in the intensity of competition might affect this type of empathy. To investigate this, we first used a Eriksen Flanker task to set different competitive intensity context (high competitive intensity, HCI; medium competitive intensity, MCI; low competitive intensity, LCI). Then we used a recognition task as a competitive task, in which we recorded event-related potentials (ERP) while participants viewed static images of body parts in painful and non-painful situations. Participants were informed that both sets of images depicted an opponent that they were required to play against in the recognition task that varied in levels of competitive intensity according to condition (HCI, MCI, and LCI). We observed an early N2 differentiation between pain and no-pain stimuli over the frontal area under MCI and LCI conditions, but this was not detected under HCI condition. Moreover, we observed a pattern of pain and no-pain differentiation for the late LPP over the frontal and centro-parietal regions under HCI, MCI, and LCI condition. As the pain empathy response is indexed by pain and no-pain differentiation, these results indicate a down-regulation of pain empathy response attributable to a high level of competition. With its very early onset, this effect appears to inhibit bottom-up processing of the ability to perceive pain experienced by an opponent. Our results provide neuroscientific evidence for a deficit in early automatic arousal in response to the pain of the opponent under the influence of high competitive intensity.

Neural Mechanisms With Respect to Different Paradigms and Relevant Regulatory Factors in Empathy for Pain

Empathy for pain is thought to activate the affective-motivational components of the pain matrix, which includes the anterior insula and middle and anterior cingulate cortices, as indicated by functional magnetic resonance imaging and other methodologies. Activity in this core neural network reflects the affective experience that activates our responses to pain and lays the neural foundation for our understanding of our own emotions and those of others. Furthermore, although picture-based paradigms can activate somatosensory components of directly experienced pain, cue-based paradigms cannot. In addition to this difference, the two paradigms evoke other distinct neuronal responses. Although the automatic “perception-action” model has long been the dominant theory for pain empathy, a “bottom-up, top-down” mechanism seems to be more comprehensive and persuasive. Indeed, a variety of factors can regulate the intensity of empathy for pain through “top-down” processes. In this paper, we integrate and generalize knowledge regarding pain empathy and introduce the findings from recent studies. We also present ideas for future research into the neural mechanisms underlying pain empathy.

The Influence of Medical Professional Knowledge on Empathy for Pain: Evidence From fNIRS

Empathy is a mental ability that allows one person to understand the mental and emotional state of another and determines how to effectively respond to that person. When a person receives cues that another person is in pain, neural pain circuits within the brain are activated. Studies have shown that compared with non-medical staff, medical practitioners present lower empathy for pain in medical scenarios, but the mechanism of this phenomenon remains in dispute. This work investigates whether the neural correlates of empathic processes of pain are altered by professional medical knowledge. The participants were 16 medical students who were enrolled at a Chinese medical college and 16 non-medical students who were enrolled at a normal university. Participants were scanned by functional near-infrared spectroscopy while watching pictures of medical scenarios that were either painful or neutral situations. Subjects were asked to evaluate the pain intensity supposedly felt by the model in the stimulus displays, and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index-C (IRI-C) questionnaire was used to measure the empathic ability of participants. The results showed that there is no significant difference between medical professional and non-medical professional subjects in IRI-C questionnaire scores. The subjects of medical professions rated the pain degree of medical pictures significantly lower than those of non-medical professions. The activation areas in non-medical subjects were mainly located in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, frontal polar regions, posterior part of the inferior frontal gyrus, supramarginal gyrus, supplementary somatosensory cortex and angular gyrus, whereas there was a wide range of activation in the prefrontal lobe region in addition to the somatosensory cortex in medical professionals. These results indicate that the process of pain empathy in medical settings is influenced by medical professional knowledge.

North American Football Fans Show Neurofunctional Differences in Response to Violence: Implications for Public Health and Policy

While social and behavioral effects of violence in the media have been studied extensively, much less is known about how sports affect perceptions of violence. The current study examined neurofunctional differences between fans and non-fans of North American football (a contact sport) while viewing violent imagery. Participants viewed images of violence in both football and non-football settings while high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data were acquired from their brains. Neurological activation was compared between these violence types and between groups. Fans of football show diminished activation in brain regions involved in pain perception and empathy such as the anterior cingulate cortex, fusiform gyrus, insula, and temporal pole when viewing violence in the context of football compared to more broadly violent images. Non-fans of football showed no such effect for the types of violent imagery and had higher activation levels than fans of football for the specified brain regions. These differences show that fans of football may perceive violence differently when it is in the context of football. These fan attitudes have potential policy implications for addressing the issue of concussions in North American football.

Trait Emotional Empathy and Resting State Functional Connectivity in Default Mode, Salience, and Central Executive Networks

Emotional empathy is the ability to experience and/or share another person’s emotional states and responses. Although some research has examined the neural correlates of emotional empathy, there has been little research investigating whether this component of empathy is related to the functional connectivity of resting state networks in the brain. In the current study, 32 participants answered a trait emotional empathy questionnaire in a session previous to their functional magnetic resonance imaging scan. Results indicate that emotional empathy scores were correlated with different patterns of functional connectivity in the default mode network (DMN), salience network (SN), and left and right central executive networks. For example, within the DMN, emotional empathy scores positively correlated with connectivity in the premotor cortex. Within the SN, empathy scores were positively correlated with the fusiform gyrus and cuneus. These findings demonstrate that emotional empathy is associated with unique patterns of functional connectivity in four of the brain’s resting state networks.

It wasn't me: The role of perspective in self-perceptions of responsibility

Perceiving oneself as agentic is dependent upon the integration of conscious intention, a corresponding outcome, and body-congruent sensorimotor information. Altering these critical cues, such as the vantage point from which an event is viewed, can have a notable impact on one's sense of agency, including an increased sense of ownership over another person's actions or a reduced sense of responsibility (or control) over one's own actions. In three studies, we investigated whether mentally simulated and written perspectives could have similar effects. Participants were asked to consider ambiguous actions from either a first-person or a third-person perspective. Results revealed that third-person perspectives reduced judgments of personal responsibility for positive and negative actions. Perceptions of personal action execution as well as the perceived overlap between one's real and imagined self were identified as mediators of the reduced sense of responsibility that characterized negative, but not positive, events constructed from a third-person perspective.

The depersonalized brain: New evidence supporting a distinction between depersonalization and derealization from discrete patterns of autonomic suppression observed in a non-clinical sample

Depersonalization and Derealization are characterised by feelings of detachment from one's bodily self/surroundings and a general emotional numbness. We explored predisposition to trait-based experiences of depersonalization/derealization-type experiences and autonomic arousal toward simulated body-threats, which were delivered to the participant's own body (i.e. Self) and when observed being delivered to another individual (i.e. Other). Ninety participants took part in an "Implied Body-Threat Illusion" task (Dewe, Watson, & Braithwaite, 2016) and autonomic arousal was recorded via standardised skin conductance responses and finger temperature. Autonomic suppression in response to threats delivered to the Self correlated with increases in trait-based depersonalization-type experiences. In contrast, autonomic suppression for threats delivered to Others correlated with trait-based derealization-like experiences. Body-temperature and anticipatory arousal did not correlate reliably with predisposition to depersonalization- or derealization-type experiences. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed in terms of a fronto-limbic autonomic suppression mechanism.

Emotion intensity modulates perspective taking in men and women: an event-related potential study

When empathizing with another individual, one can imagine the individual's emotional states and how he or she perceives a situation. However, it is not known to what extent imagining the other differs from imagining oneself under different emotional intensity situations in both sexes. The present study investigated the regulatory effect of emotional intensity on perspective taking in men and women by event-related potentials. The participants were shown pictures of individuals in highly negative (HN), moderately negative, and neutral situations, and instructed to imagine the degree of pain perceived from either a self-perspective or an other-perspective. The results showed that there was no N2 differentiation between the self-perspective and other-perspective under all conditions. Nor was there late positive potential differentiation under moderately negative and neutral conditions in either sex. In contrast, late positive potential induced by HN pictures under the self-perspective was significantly larger than that under the other-perspective only in women. These results suggested that women tended to overestimate the pain of HN stimuli from a self-perspective than from an other-perspective.

Cooperative and Competitive Contextual Effects on Social Cognitive and Empathic Neural Responses

We aimed to differentiate the neural responses to cooperative and competitive contexts, which are the two of the most important social contexts in human society. Healthy male college students were asked to complete a Tetris-like task requiring mental rotation skills under individual, cooperative, and competitive contexts in an fMRI scanner. While the participants completed the task, pictures of others experiencing pain evoking emotional empathy randomly appeared to capture contextual effects on empathic neural responses. Behavioral results indicated that, in the presence of cooperation, participants solved the tasks more accurately and quickly than what they did when in the presence of competition. The fMRI results revealed activations in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) related to executive functions and theory of mind when participants performed the task under both cooperative and competitive contexts, whereas no activation of such areas was observed in the individual context. Cooperation condition exhibited stronger neural responses in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and dmPFC than competition condition. Competition condition, however, showed marginal neural responses in the cerebellum and anterior insular cortex (AIC). The two social contexts involved stronger empathic neural responses to other's pain than the individual context, but no substantial differences between cooperation and competition were present. Regions of interest analyses revealed that individual's trait empathy modulated the neural activity in the state empathy network, the AIC, and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) depending on the social context. These results suggest that cooperation improves task performance and activates neural responses associated with reward and mentalizing. Furthermore, the interaction between trait- and state-empathy was explored by correlation analyses between individual's trait empathy score and changing empathic brain activations along with the exposure to the cooperative and competitive social contexts.

Brain Structural and Functional Substrates of Personal Distress in Empathy

Empathy is the capacity to understand and experience the feeling state of others. While individuals attribute negative empathic responses to their own feelings, they would endure personal distress that can be harmful to social interaction. However, the neural mechanism of personal distress remains unclear. Here, we examined the neural substrates of personal distress by combining structural (Voxel-based morphometry (VBM)) and functional (resting-state functional connectivity (FC) analysis) MRI approaches in 53 college students (aged 19–26). A negative correlation was found between a trait measure of personal distress and gray matter (GM) volume in the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC). FC analyses with the dmPFC as a seed further revealed that the connectivity between the dmPFC and posterior insula was positively correlated with the personal distress, and the connectivities between the dmPFC and the anterior middle cingulate cortex, left lateral frontal cortex, and left inferior parietal gyrus were negatively correlated with the personal distress. Our results suggested that personal distress is underlain by neural substrates associated with both cognitive and affective mechanisms. Taken together, the structural and functional correlates of personal distress revealed in the present findings shed new light into the understanding of empathy.

Intentional and Unintentional Empathy for Pain Among Physicians and Nonphysicians

Empathy can be both beneficial and costly. This trade-off is pertinent for physicians who must care for patients while maintaining emotional distance to avoid burnout. Prior work using self-report and neurophysiological measures has found mixed evidence for differences in empathy between physicians and nonphysicians. We used implicit measurement and multinomial modeling to examine intentional empathy (IE) and unintentional empathy (UE) for pain among physicians and demographically matched nonphysicians. Relative to nonphysicians, physicians displayed greater ability to judge the painfulness of target experiences (i.e., IE). Contrary to some prior work, however, physicians and nonphysicians displayed comparable spontaneous resonance with distracter experiences (i.e., UE). These findings suggest that physicians may be more likely than nonphysicians to empathize with others’ pain when empathy aligns with their overt goals.

fMRI-based Multivariate Pattern Analyses Reveal Imagery Modality and Imagery Content Specific Representations in Primary Somatosensory, Motor and Auditory Cortices

Previous studies have shown that the early visual cortex contains content-specific representations of stimuli during visual imagery, and that these representational patterns of imagery content have a perceptual basis. To date, there is little evidence for the presence of a similar organization in the auditory and tactile domains. Using fMRI-based multivariate pattern analyses we showed that primary somatosensory, auditory, motor, and visual cortices are discriminative for imagery of touch versus sound. In the somatosensory, motor and visual cortices the imagery modality discriminative patterns were similar to perception modality discriminative patterns, suggesting that top-down modulations in these regions rely on similar neural representations as bottom-up perceptual processes. Moreover, we found evidence for content-specific representations of the stimuli during auditory imagery in the primary somatosensory and primary motor cortices. Both the imagined emotions and the imagined identities of the auditory stimuli could be successfully classified in these regions.

Neurophysiological Effects of Trait Empathy in Music Listening

The social cognitive basis of music processing has long been noted, and recent research has shown that trait empathy is linked to musical preferences and listening style. Does empathy modulate neural responses to musical sounds? We designed two functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments to address this question. In Experiment 1, subjects listened to brief isolated musical timbres while being scanned. In Experiment 2, subjects listened to excerpts of music in four conditions (familiar liked (FL)/disliked and unfamiliar liked (UL)/disliked). For both types of musical stimuli, emotional and cognitive forms of trait empathy modulated activity in sensorimotor and cognitive areas: in the first experiment, empathy was primarily correlated with activity in supplementary motor area (SMA), inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and insula; in Experiment 2, empathy was mainly correlated with activity in prefrontal, temporo-parietal and reward areas. Taken together, these findings reveal the interactions between bottom-up and top-down mechanisms of empathy in response to musical sounds, in line with recent findings from other cognitive domains.

Atypical susceptibility to the rubber hand illusion linked to sensory-localised vicarious pain perception

The Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) paradigm has been widely used to investigate the sense of body ownership. People who report experiencing the pain of others are hypothesised to have differences in computing body ownership and, hence, we predicted that they would perform atypically on the RHI. The Vicarious Pain Questionnaire (VPQ), was used to divide participants into three groups: (1) non-responders (people who report no pain when seeing someone else experiencing physical pain), (2) sensory-localised responders (report sensory qualities and a localised feeling of pain) and (3) affective-general responders (report a generalised and emotional feeling of pain). The sensory-localised group, showed susceptibility to the RHI (increased proprioceptive drift) irrespective of whether stimulation was synchronous or asynchronous, whereas the other groups only showed the RHI in the synchronous condition. This is not a general bias to always incorporate the dummy hand as we did not find increased susceptibility in other conditions (seeing touch without feeling touch, or feeling touch without seeing touch), but there was a trend for this group to incorporate the dummy hand when it was stroked with a laser light. Although individual differences in the RHI have been noted previously, this particular pattern is rare. It suggests a greater malleability (i.e. insensitivity to asynchrony) in the conditions in which other bodies influence own-body judgments.

The Effect of Social Observational Learning, Empathy and Catastrophizing in Chronic Pain Patients During Acute Pain Induction

Objective

In this study, we were interested in determining whether we could alter a pain response in a chronic pain patient population by exposing participants to different videos prior to inducing acute pain.

Design

This observational case series study required participants to report their pain level during the cold pressor task after viewing an instruction video.

Setting

Recruitment and testing took place in a tertiary care multidisciplinary pain center.

Subjects

Forty adults with chronic pain participated in the study and completed the cold pressor test.

Methods

Prior to testing, questionnaires measuring pain, empathy, and catastrophic thinking were completed and participants were randomized to view an instructional video where an actress either demonstrated pain behavior or a stoic response during the cold pressor test.

Results

Participants with higher levels of catastrophizing reported higher pain levels during the cold pressor test. Personal Distress Empathy measures of participants who viewed the pain catastrophizing video were significantly correlated with their final pain reports. Following the cold pressor task, participants' pain reports for their primary chronic pain sites were significantly reduced.

Conclusions

These results support previous findings that people with chronic pain show the tendency toward increased acute pain experience if levels of catastrophizing and Personal Distress Empathy measures are higher. Participants reported attenuated chronic pain following induced pain, also in line with previous research suggesting a central endogenous inhibitory effect. Our findings shed light on the role of emotional and social components affecting the experience of pain in individuals with chronic pain.

Childhood emotional invalidation and right hemispheric mu suppression during a pain empathy task: An EEG study

Empathy is a critical aspect of social behavior, and impairment in empathic processing is linked to hindered social interactions and several disorders. Despite much interest in this topic, our understanding of the developmental and neural involvement for empathic processing is limited. Recent evidence suggests the Mirror Neuron System (MNS) may play a role in this behavior, and that mu rhythm suppression found over the sensorimotor cortices may be a proxy for the MNS. Therefore, we aimed to measure mu rhythm oscillations in response to empathic processing during observation of painful action-based situations using electroencephalogram (EEG). Our second goal was to examine how perceived parental emotional invalidation (EI) during childhood may relate to empathy and influence mu suppression. Our results showed that mu rhythm suppression was strongest over the right hemisphere. EI had a significant influence on this suppression between painful and non-painful images, and was negatively correlated with behavioral measures of empathy. Our findings suggest that perceived childhood EI may decrease empathizing abilities and influence neural responses to the painful experiences of others. Implications from this study could entail clinical intervention targeted at emotional invalidation to foster the healthy development of empathy.

Measuring the Psychological Distance between an Organization and Its Members-The Construction and Validation of a New Scale

There exists a lack of specific research methods to estimate the relationship between an organization and its employees, which has long challenged research in the field of organizational management. Therefore, this article introduces psychological distance concept into the research of organizational behavior, which can define the concept of psychological distance between employees and an organization and describe a level of perceived correspondence or interaction between subjects and objects. We developed an employee-organization psychological distance (EOPD) scale through both qualitative and quantitative analysis methods. As indicated by the research results based on grounded theory (10 employee in-depth interview records and 277 opening questionnaires) and formal investigation (544 questionnaires), this scale consists of six dimensions: experiential distance, behavioral distance, emotional distance, cognitive distance, spatial-temporal distance, and objective social distance based on 44 items. Finally, we determined that the EOPD scale exhibited acceptable reliability and validity using confirmatory factor analysis. This research may establish a foundation for future research on the measurement of psychological relationships between employees and organizations.

The good, the bad, and the suffering. Transient emotional episodes modulate the neural circuits of pain and empathy

People's sensitivity to first-hand pain is affected by their ongoing emotions, with positive states (joy, amusement) exerting analgesic-like effects, and negative states (sadness, fear) often enhancing the subjective experience. It is however less clear how empathetic responses to others' pain are affected by one's own emotional state. Following embodied accounts that posit a shared representational code between self and others' states, it is plausible that pain empathy might be influenced by emotions in the same way as first-hand pain. Alternatively, other theories in psychology suggest that social resources (including empathetic reactions) might be enhanced by positive states, but inhibited by negative states, as only in the former case, one's mindset is sufficiently broad to take into consideration others' needs. To disambiguate between these opposing predictions, we conducted two experiments in which volunteers observed positive, neutral, or negative video clips, and subsequently either received painful thermal stimuli on their own body (first-hand pain), or observed images of wounded hands (others' pain). We measured subjective pain ratings as well as physiological responses and brain activity using fMRI. We found that, contrary to the case of first-hand pain, others' pain produced weaker galvanic responses and lower neural activity in anterior insula and middle cingulate cortex following negative (relative to neutral and positive) videos. Such inhibition was partially counteracted by personal empathy traits, as individuals with higher scores retained greater sensitivity to others' pain after negative emotion induction, in both behavioral and neural responses in medial prefrontal cortex. Furthermore, multivoxel pattern analysis confirmed similar neural representation for first-hand and others' pain in anterior insula, with representation similarity increasing the more the video preceding the observation of others' suffering was positive. These findings speak against the idea that emotion induction affects first-hand and others' pain in an isomorphic way, but rather supports the idea that contrary to negative emotions, positive emotions favors a broader access to social resources.

The neural correlates of self-referential memory encoding and retrieval in schizophrenia

BACKGROUND

Enhanced memory for self-oriented information is known as the self-referential memory (SRM) effect. fMRI studies of the SRM effect have focused almost exclusively on encoding, revealing selective engagement of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) during "self" relative to other processing conditions. Other critical areas for self-processing include ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC), temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) and posterior cingulate/precuneus (PCC/PC). Previous behavioral studies show that individuals with schizophrenia fail to benefit from this memory boost. However, the neural correlates of this deficit, at either encoding or retrieval, are unknown.

METHODS

Twenty individuals with schizophrenia and 16 healthy controls completed an event-related fMRI SRM paradigm. During encoding, trait adjectives were judged in terms of structural features ("case" condition), social desirability ("other" condition), or as self-referential ("self" condition). Participants then completed an unexpected recognition test (retrieval phase). We examined BOLD activation during both encoding and retrieval within mPFC, vlPFC, TPJ, and PCC/PC regions-of-interest (ROIs).

RESULTS

During encoding, fMRI data indicated both groups had greater activation during the "self" relative to the "other" condition across ROIs. Controls showed this primarily in mPFC whereas patients showed this in PCC/PC. During retrieval, fMRI data indicated controls showed differentiation across ROIs between "self" and "other" conditions, but patients did not.

CONCLUSIONS

Results suggest regional differences in the neural processing of self-referential information in individuals with schizophrenia, perhaps because representation of the self is not as well established in patients relative to controls. The current study presents novel findings that add to the literature implicating impaired self-oriented processing in schizophrenia.

Hypersensitivity to low intensity fearful faces in autism when fixation is constrained to the eyes

Previous studies that showed decreased brain activation in people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) viewing expressive faces did not control that participants looked in the eyes. This is problematic because ASD is characterized by abnormal attention to the eyes. Here, we collected fMRI data from 48 participants (27 ASD) viewing pictures of neutral faces and faces expressing anger, happiness, and fear at low and high intensity, with a fixation cross between the eyes. Group differences in whole brain activity were examined for expressive faces at high and low intensity versus neutral faces. Group differences in neural activity were also investigated in regions of interest within the social brain, including the amygdala and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). In response to low intensity fearful faces, ASD participants showed increased activation in the social brain regions, and decreased functional coupling between the amygdala and the vmPFC. This oversensitivity to low intensity fear coupled with a lack of emotional regulation capacity could indicate an excitatory/inhibitory imbalance in their socio-affective processing system. This may result in social disengagement and avoidance of eye-contact to handle feelings of strong emotional reaction. Our results also demonstrate the importance of careful control of gaze when investigating emotional processing in ASD. Hum Brain Mapp 38:5943-5957, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

A Study of the Brain Functional Network of Post-Stroke Depression in Three Different Lesion Locations

Research on the mechanism of post stroke depression (PSD) is the key way to improve the treatment of PSD. However, the functional brain network of PSD has not been entirely supported by the results of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies. The aims of this study are to investigate the brain response of PSD in three different lesions. The brain responses of the three PSD subgroups were similar. However, each subgroup had its own characteristics of the brain network. In the temporal lobe subgroup, the right thalamus had increased degree centrality (DC) values which were different from the other two subgroups. In the frontal lobe subgroup, the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, caudate, and postcentral gyrus had increased DC values which were different from the other two subgroups. The hemodynamic response of PSD indicates that PSD has activities of similar emotional networks, of which the negative network realizes its function through the limbic system and default mode network. The brain network has unique characteristics for different lesion locations. The neurological function of the lesion location, the compensatory mechanism of the brain, and the mechanism of integrity and locality of the brain are the important factors in the individual emotional network.

A Study of the Brain Abnormalities of Post-Stroke Depression in Frontal Lobe Lesion

Post stroke depression (PSD) is a serious complication of stroke. Brain imaging is an important method of studying the mechanism of PSD. However, few studies have focused on the single lesion location. The aim of this study was to investigate the brain mechanism of frontal lobe PSD using combined voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In total, 30 first-time ischemic frontal lobe stroke patients underwent T1 weighted MRI and resting-state fMRI scans. Clinical assessments included the 24-item Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression, the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale, and the Mini-Mental State Examination. In our result, decreased gray matter (GM) volume in patients was observed in the prefrontal cortex, limbic system and motor cortex. The anterior cingulate cortex, selected as a seed to perform connectivity analyses, showed a greatly decreased functional connectivity with the prefrontal cortex, cingulate cortex, and motor cortex, but had an increased functional connectivity with the hippocampus gyrus, parahippocampa gyrus, insular, and amygdala. Stroke lesion location reduces excitability of brain areas in the ipsilateral brain. PSD affects mood through the brain network of the prefrontal-limbic circuit. Some brain networks, including motor cortex and the default mode network, show other characteristics of PSD brain network.

Robots As Intentional Agents: Using Neuroscientific Methods to Make Robots Appear More Social

Robots are increasingly envisaged as our future cohabitants. However, while considerable progress has been made in recent years in terms of their technological realization, the ability of robots to interact with humans in an intuitive and social way is still quite limited. An important challenge for social robotics is to determine how to design robots that can perceive the user's needs, feelings, and intentions, and adapt to users over a broad range of cognitive abilities. It is conceivable that if robots were able to adequately demonstrate these skills, humans would eventually accept them as social companions. We argue that the best way to achieve this is using a systematic experimental approach based on behavioral and physiological neuroscience methods such as motion/eye-tracking, electroencephalography, or functional near-infrared spectroscopy embedded in interactive human-robot paradigms. This approach requires understanding how humans interact with each other, how they perform tasks together and how they develop feelings of social connection over time, and using these insights to formulate design principles that make social robots attuned to the workings of the human brain. In this review, we put forward the argument that the likelihood of artificial agents being perceived as social companions can be increased by designing them in a way that they are perceived as intentional agents that activate areas in the human brain involved in social-cognitive processing. We first review literature related to social-cognitive processes and mechanisms involved in human-human interactions, and highlight the importance of perceiving others as intentional agents to activate these social brain areas. We then discuss how attribution of intentionality can positively affect human-robot interaction by (a) fostering feelings of social connection, empathy and prosociality, and by (b) enhancing performance on joint human-robot tasks. Lastly, we describe circumstances under which attribution of intentionality to robot agents might be disadvantageous, and discuss challenges associated with designing social robots that are inspired by neuroscientific principles.

Altered Empathy for Psychological and Physical Pain in Borderline Personality Disorder

Many patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) experience difficulties in empathizing with others and are sensitive to social exclusion. Accordingly, the authors developed a novel Social Interaction Empathy Task to examine empathy for physical and psychological pain from first- and third-person perspectives. Fifty female patients with BPD and forty-eight controls matched for age and gender were included. Alexithymia was also measured. Patients with BPD rated neutral and psychologically painful situations as more painful than healthy controls, and patients with BPD rated psychological pain as more intense in the first-person perspective than in the third-person perspective. In contrast, controls did not differentiate between the perspectives and rated physical pain as most intense. The impact of early adversity on empathy for psychological pain was mediated by alexithymia. Increased sensitivity for psychological pain in BPD correlated with symptom severity. BPD is associated with altered empathy for pain, which is related to difficulties in reflecting emotional states.

Anodal transcranial direct current stimulation of right temporoparietal area inhibits self-recognition

Self–other discrimination is a crucial mechanism for social cognition. Neuroimaging and neurostimulation research has pointed to the involvement of the right temporoparietal region in a variety of self–other discrimination tasks. Although repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation over the right temporoparietal area has been shown to disrupt self–other discrimination in face-recognition tasks, no research has investigated the effect of increasing the cortical excitability in this region on self–other face discrimination. Here we used transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to investigate changes in self–other discrimination with a video-morphing task in which the participant’s face morphed into, or out of, a familiar other’s face. The task was performed before and after 20 min of tDCS targeting the right temporoparietal area (anodal, cathodal, or sham stimulation). Differences in task performance following stimulation were taken to indicate a change in self–other discrimination. Following anodal stimulation only, we observed a significant increase in the amount of self-face needed to distinguish between self and other. The findings are discussed in relation to the control of self and other representations and to domain-general theories of social cognition.

Uncovering the influence of social skills and psychosociological factors on pain sensitivity using structural equation modeling

Pain is a subjective emotional experience that is influenced by psychosociological factors such as social skills, which are defined as problem-solving abilities in social interactions. This study aimed to reveal the relationships among pain, social skills, and other psychosociological factors by using structural equation modeling. A total of 101 healthy volunteers (41 men and 60 women; mean age: 36.6±12.7 years) participated in this study. To evoke participants’ sense of inner pain, we showed them images of painful scenes on a PC screen and asked them to evaluate the pain intensity by using the visual analog scale (VAS). We examined the correlation between social skills and VAS, constructed a hypothetical model based on results from previous studies and the current correlational analysis results, and verified the model’s fit using structural equation modeling. We found significant positive correlations between VAS and total social skills values, as well as between VAS and the “start of relationships” subscales. Structural equation modeling revealed that the values for “start of relationships” had a direct effect on VAS values (path coefficient =0.32, p<0.01). In addition, the “start of relationships” had both a direct and an indirect effect on psychological factors via social support. The results indicated that extroverted people are more sensitive to inner pain and tend to get more social support and maintain a better psychological condition.

Serial MRI Scan of Posterior Fossa Tumours Predict Patients at Risk of Developing Neurocognitive Impairment

Background:

Brain tumours are the most common solid tumours in children. More than 50% of these tumours develop in the posterior cranial fossa. Long term survivors of posterior fossa tumours (PFT) suffer from neurocognitive and memory issues. We hypothesized that serial MRI scanning of brain would show differences in hippocampal and ACC volume change in PFT patients treated with and without chemo-radiotherapy.

Material and Methods:

Twelve patients (8 females and 4 males) underwent 76 serial MR imaging examinations before and during treatment for posterior fossa tumours. Seven patients (4 medulloblastoma, 2 as ependymoma and 1 high grade glioma) were treated with maximum surgical resection followed by adjuvant radiotherapy and chemotherapy (Group 1). The other five patients were diagnosed as pilocytic astrocytoma who were treated only with surgery (Group 2). Hippocampal volumes were obtained manually on high-resolution 3Tesla T1-weighted images and normalised to intracranial volume, while ACC thickness and volume were obtained automatically using FreeSurfer software.

Results:

After the treatment period, the change in normalised hippocampal volume from baseline was significantly lower in group 1 patients compared to group 2 (mean change -0.0001470 ± 8.981e-005; Mean ± SEM vs 0.0002765 ± 9.151e-005; Mean ± SEM, respectively, P=0.004). Displayed graphically, the negative hippocampal growth trajectory in group 1 gradually returned to a positive growth pattern. There were no statistically significant changes in ACC volume and thickness. Both groups had similar rates of pre-operative hydrocephalus.

Conclusion:

Compared to PFT patients treated with surgery alone, PFT patients treated with chemo-radiotherapy showed lower hippocampal volumes and altered hippocampal growth trajectory. Serial quantitative MRI measures of brain may provide a neuroanatomical substrate for assessing functional impact on normal brain function following treatment of posterior fossa tumours.

Social brain circuitry and social cognition in infants born preterm

Preterm birth is associated with an increased risk of adverse neurologic, psychiatric, and cognitive outcomes. The brain circuits involved in processing social information are critical to all of these domains, but little work has been done to examine whether and how these circuits may be especially sensitive to prematurity. This paper contains a brief summary of some of the cognitive, psychiatric, and social outcomes associated with prematurity, followed by a description of findings from the modest body of research into social-cognitive development in infants and children born preterm. Next, findings from studies of structural and functional brain development in infants born preterm are reviewed, with an eye toward the distinctive role of the brain circuits implicated in social functioning. The goal of this review is to investigate the extent to which the putative "social brain" may have particular developmental susceptibilities to the insults associated with preterm birth, and the role of early social-cognitive development in later neurodevelopmental outcomes. Much work has been done to characterize neurobehavioral outcomes in the preterm population, but future research must incorporate both brain and behavioral measures to identify early biomarkers linked to later emerging social-cognitive clinical impairment in order to guide effective, targeted intervention.