Empathic Care and Distress: Predictive Brain Markers and Dissociable Brain Systems

Dissecting shared pain representations to understand their behavioral and clinical relevance

Accounts of shared representations posit that the experience of pain and pain empathy rely on similar neural mechanisms. Experimental research employing novel analytical and methodological approaches has made significant advances in both the identification and targeted manipulation of such shared experiences and their neural underpinnings. This revealed that painful experiences can be shared on different representational levels, from pain-specific to domain-general features, such as negative affect and its regulation. In view of direct links between such representations and social behaviors such as prosocial behavior, conditions characterized by aberrant pain processing may come along with heavy impairments in the social domain, depending on the affected representational level. This has wide potential implications in light of the high prevalence of pain-related clinical conditions, their management, and the overuse of pain medication. In this review and opinion paper, we aim to chart the path toward a better understanding of the link between shared affect and prosocial behavior.

Neuroanatomical markers of social cognition in neglected adolescents

Growing up in neglectful households can impact multiple aspects of social cognition. However, research on neglect's effects on social cognition processes and their neuroanatomical correlates during adolescence is scarce. Here, we aimed to comprehensively assess social cognition processes (recognition of basic and contextual emotions, theory of mind, the experience of envy and Schadenfreude and empathy for pain) and their structural brain correlates in adolescents with legal neglect records within family-based care. First, we compared neglected adolescents (n = 27) with control participants (n = 25) on context-sensitive social cognition tasks while controlling for physical and emotional abuse and executive and intellectual functioning. Additionally, we explored the grey matter correlates of these domains through voxel-based morphometry. Compared to controls, neglected adolescents exhibited lower performance in contextual emotional recognition and theory of mind, higher levels of envy and Schadenfreude and diminished empathy. Physical and emotional abuse and executive or intellectual functioning did not explain these effects. Moreover, social cognition scores correlated with brain volumes in regions subserving social cognition and emotional processing. Our results underscore the potential impact of neglect on different aspects of social cognition during adolescence, emphasizing the necessity for preventive and intervention strategies to address these deficits in this population.

A brief induction of loving kindness meditation to reduce anti-fat bias

Weight stigma is highly prevalent. However, existing weight stigma interventions are only modestly effective at reducing anti-fat attitudes. The current research proposes a novel approach using a loving kindness meditation (LKM). Experiment 1 tests whether random assignment to the LKM intervention reduces explicit and implicit anti-fat bias and increases empathy based on the LKM recipient with higher weight (close other vs. stranger). Experiment 2 tests whether LKM outperforms an empathy intervention or control to increase empathy or reduce stigmatizing behavior. Results revealed that the LKM increased empathic care but did not reduce anti-fat bias compared to control; the LKM intervention, but not the empathy intervention, reported greater empathy compared to control in unadjusted analyses; and participants in the LKM and empathy interventions (vs. control) were more likely to engage in stigmatizing behavior. These findings suggest that the LKM may not be effective at reducing weight stigma despite increasing empathy.

Neural mechanisms of costly helping in the general population and mirror-pain synesthetes

It has been argued that experiencing the pain of others motivates helping. Here, we investigate the contribution of somatic feelings while witnessing the pain of others onto costly helping decisions, by contrasting the choices and brain activity of participants that report feeling somatic feelings (self-reported mirror-pain synesthetes) against those that do not. Participants in fMRI witnessed a confederate receiving pain stimulations whose intensity they could reduce by donating money. The pain intensity could be inferred either from the facial expressions of the confederate in pain (Face condition) or from the kinematics of the pain-receiving hand (Hand condition). Our results show that self-reported mirror-pain synesthetes increase their donation more steeply, as the intensity of the observed pain increases, and their somatosensory brain activity (SII and the adjacent IPL) was more tightly associated with donation in the Hand condition. For all participants, activation in insula, SII, TPJ, pSTS, amygdala and MCC correlated with the trial by trial donation made in the Face condition, while SI and MTG activation was correlated with the donation in the Hand condition. These results further inform us about the role of somatic feelings while witnessing the pain of others in situations of costly helping.

Neuroimaging and behavioral evidence that violent video games exert no negative effect on human empathy for pain and emotional reactivity to violence

Influential accounts claim that violent video games (VVGs) decrease players' emotional empathy by desensitizing them to both virtual and real-life violence. However, scientific evidence for this claim is inconclusive and controversially debated. To assess the causal effect of VVGs on the behavioral and neural correlates of empathy and emotional reactivity to violence, we conducted a prospective experimental study using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We recruited 89 male participants without prior VVG experience. Over the course of two weeks, participants played either a highly violent video game or a non-violent version of the same game. Before and after this period, participants completed an fMRI experiment with paradigms measuring their empathy for pain and emotional reactivity to violent images. Applying a Bayesian analysis approach throughout enabled us to find substantial evidence for the absence of an effect of VVGs on the behavioral and neural correlates of empathy. Moreover, participants in the VVG group were not desensitized to images of real-world violence. These results imply that short and controlled exposure to VVGs does not numb empathy nor the responses to real-world violence. We discuss the implications of our findings regarding the potential and limitations of experimental research on the causal effects of VVGs. While VVGs might not have a discernible effect on the investigated subpopulation within our carefully controlled experimental setting, our results cannot preclude that effects could be found in settings with higher ecological validity, in vulnerable subpopulations, or after more extensive VVG play.

Neural signatures of emotional inference and experience align during social consensus

Humans seamlessly transform dynamic social signals into inferences about the internal states of the people around them. To understand the neural processes that sustain this transformation, we collected fMRI data from participants (N = 100) while they rated the emotional intensity of people (targets) describing significant life events. Targets rated themselves on the same scale to indicate the intended "ground truth" emotional intensity of their videos. Next, we developed two multivariate models of observer brain activity- the first predicted the "ground truth" (r = 0.50, p < 0.0001) and the second predicted observer inferences (r = 0.53, p < 0.0001). When individuals make more accurate inferences, there is greater moment-by-moment concordance between these two models, suggesting that an observer's brain activity contains latent representations of other people's emotional states. Using naturalistic socioemotional stimuli and machine learning, we developed reliable brain signatures that predict what an observer thinks about a target, what the target thinks about themselves, and the correspondence between them. These signatures can be applied in clinical data to better our understanding of socioemotional dysfunction.

Kin relationality and ecological belonging: a cultural psychology of Indigenous transcendence

In this article, we consider prosociality through the lens of an Indigenous "ethics of belonging" and its two constitutive concepts: kin relationality and ecological belonging. Kin relationality predicates that all living beings and phenomena share a familial identity of interdependence, mutuality, and organization. Within the value system of ecological belonging, an individual's identity is constituted in relation to the natural environment, centered on the sentiments of responsibility and reverence for Nature. We detail how Indigenous perspectives upon prosociality differ from Western scientific accounts in terms of the motives, scope, and rewards of altruistic action. Grounded in this understanding, we then profile three self-transcendent states, compassion, gratitude, and awe, and their similarities across Indigenous and Western approaches, and how kin relationality and ecological belonging give rise to cultural variations. We consider convergent insights across Indigenous and Western science concerning the role of ritual and narrative and the cultural cultivation of kin relationality and ecological belonging. We conclude by highlighting how these two core concepts might guide future inquiry in cultural psychology.

Visualizing Compassion: Episodic Simulation as Contemplative Practice

Contemplative interventions designed to cultivate compassion are receiving increasing empirical attention. Accumulating evidence suggests that these interventions bolster prosocial motivation and warmth towards others. Less is known about how these practices impact compassion in everyday life. Here we consider one mechanistic pathway through which compassion practices may impact perception and action in the world: simulation. Evidence suggests that vividly imagining a situation simulates that experience in the brain as if it were, to a degree, actually happening. Thus, we hypothesize that simulation during imagery-based contemplative practices can construct sensorimotor patterns in the brain that prime an individual to act compassionately in the world. We first present evidence across multiple literatures in Psychology that motivates this hypothesis, including the neuroscience of mental imagery and the emerging literature on prosocial episodic simulation. Then, we examine the specific contemplative practices in compassion-based interventions that may construct such simulations. We conclude with future directions for investigating how compassion-based interventions may shape prosocial perception and action in everyday life.

A functional account of stimulation-based aerobic glycolysis and its role in interpreting BOLD signal intensity increases in neuroimaging experiments

In aerobic glycolysis, oxygen is abundant, and yet cells metabolize glucose without using it, decreasing their ATP per glucose yield by 15-fold. During task-based stimulation, aerobic glycolysis occurs in localized brain regions, presenting a puzzle: why produce ATP inefficiently when, all else being equal, evolution should favor the efficient use of metabolic resources? The answer is that all else is not equal. We propose that a tradeoff exists between efficient ATP production and the efficiency with which ATP is spent to transmit information. Aerobic glycolysis, despite yielding little ATP per glucose, may support neuronal signaling in thin (< 0.5 µm), information-efficient axons. We call this the efficiency tradeoff hypothesis. This tradeoff has potential implications for interpretations of task-related BOLD "activation" observed in fMRI. We hypothesize that BOLD "activation" may index local increases in aerobic glycolysis, which support signaling in thin axons carrying "bottom-up" information, or "prediction error"-i.e., the BIAPEM (BOLD increases approximate prediction error metabolism) hypothesis. Finally, we explore implications of our hypotheses for human brain evolution, social behavior, and mental disorders.

Pre-COVID brain functional connectome features prospectively predict emergence of distress symptoms after onset of the COVID-19 pandemic

BACKGROUND

Persistent psychological distress associated with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has been well documented. This study aimed to identify pre-COVID brain functional connectome that predicts pandemic-related distress symptoms among young adults.

METHODS

Baseline neuroimaging studies and assessment of general distress using the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale were performed with 100 healthy individuals prior to wide recognition of the health risks associated with the emergence of COVID-19. They were recontacted for the Impact of Event Scale-Revised and the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist in the period of community-level outbreaks, and for follow-up distress evaluation again 1 year later. We employed the network-based statistic approach to identify connectome that predicted the increase of distress based on 136-region-parcellation with assigned network membership. Predictive performance of connectome features and causal relations were examined by cross-validation and mediation analyses.

RESULTS

The connectome features that predicted emergence of distress after COVID contained 70 neural connections. Most within-network connections were located in the default mode network (DMN), and affective network-DMN and dorsal attention network-DMN links largely constituted between-network pairs. The hippocampus emerged as the most critical hub region. Predictive models of the connectome remained robust in cross-validation. Mediation analyses demonstrated that COVID-related posttraumatic stress partially explained the correlation of connectome to the development of general distress.

CONCLUSIONS

Brain functional connectome may fingerprint individuals with vulnerability to psychological distress associated with the COVID pandemic. Individuals with brain neuromarkers may benefit from the corresponding interventions to reduce the risk or severity of distress related to fear of COVID-related challenges.

Psychological resilience mediates the protective role of default-mode network functional connectivity against COVID-19 vicarious traumatization

Vicarious traumatization (VT), a negative reaction to witnessing others' trauma, has been experienced by some people during the COVID-19 pandemic, and can lead to mental health problems. This study aimed to identify functional brain markers of COVID-specific VT and explore the psychological mechanism underlying the brain-VT link. One hundred healthy participants underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging before the pandemic (October 2019-January 2020) and completed VT measurement during the pandemic (February-April 2020). Whole-brain correlation analysis based on global functional connectivity density (FCD) mapping revealed that VT was negatively correlated with FCD in the right inferior temporal gyrus (ITG) (i.e., the lower FCD in ITG, the worse the VT), identified by mapping onto known large-scale networks as part of the default-mode network (DMN). Resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) analysis using ITG as seed found that VT was predicted by lower functional connectivity between ITG and other DMN regions including left medial prefrontal cortex, left orbitofrontal cortex, right superior frontal gyrus, right inferior parietal lobule and bilateral precuneus (i.e., the lower the ITG-DMN connectivity, the worse the VT). Mediation analyses suggested that psychological resilience served as a mediator in these associations of ITG FCD and ITG-DMN RSFC with VT. Our results provide novel evidence on the brain basis of VT and emphasize psychological resilience as an important link from DMN functional connectivity to COVID-specific-VT. This may facilitate public health interventions by helping identify individuals at risk of stress- and trauma-related psychopathologies.

A multivariate brain signature for reward

The processing of reinforcers and punishers is crucial to adapt to an ever changing environment and its dysregulation is prevalent in mental health and substance use disorders. While many human brain measures related to reward have been based on activity in individual brain regions, recent studies indicate that many affective and motivational processes are encoded in distributed systems that span multiple regions. Consequently, decoding these processes using individual regions yields small effect sizes and limited reliability, whereas predictive models based on distributed patterns yield larger effect sizes and excellent reliability. To create such a predictive model for the processes of rewards and losses, termed the Brain Reward Signature (BRS), we trained a model to predict the signed magnitude of monetary rewards on the Monetary Incentive Delay task (MID; N = 39) and achieved a highly significant decoding performance (92% for decoding rewards versus losses). We subsequently demonstrate the generalizability of our signature on another version of the MID in a different sample (92% decoding accuracy; N = 12) and on a gambling task from a large sample (73% decoding accuracy, N = 1084). We further provided preliminary data to characterize the specificity of the signature by illustrating that the signature map generates estimates that significantly differ between rewarding and negative feedback (92% decoding accuracy) but do not differ for conditions that differ in disgust rather than reward in a novel Disgust-Delay Task (N = 39). Finally, we show that passively viewing positive and negatively valenced facial expressions loads positively on our signature, in line with previous studies on morbid curiosity. We thus created a BRS that can accurately predict brain responses to rewards and losses in active decision making tasks, and that possibly relates to information seeking in passive observational tasks.

From Oxytocin to Compassion: The Saliency of Distress

Compassion is a warm response of care and concern for those who are suffering, which drives individuals to devote their resources for the sake of others. A prominent neuroevolutionary framework grounds compassion in the neurobiology of the mammalian caregiving system. Accordingly, it has been suggested that the oxytocinergic system, which plays a central role in parental caregiving and bonding, provides the neurobiological foundation for compassion towards strangers. Yet, the specific role of oxytocin in compassion is far from clear. The current paper aims to target this gap and offer a theoretical framework that integrates the state-of-the-art literature on oxytocin with research on compassion. We suggest that oxytocin mediates compassion by enhancing the saliency of cues of pain and distress and discuss the plausible underlying neurobiological substrates. We further demonstrate how the proposed framework can account for individual differences in compassion, focusing on the effects of attachment on caregiving and support. The proposed framework integrates the current scientific understanding of oxytocin function with compassion-related processes. It thus highlights the largely ignored attentional processes in compassion and taps into the vast variability of responses in social contexts involving pain and suffering.

'Involve me and I learn': an experiential teaching approach to improve dyspnea awareness in medical residents

BACKGROUND

Dyspnea is a frightening and debilitating experience. It attracts less attention than pain ('dyspnea invisibility'), possibly because of its non-universal nature. We tested the impact of self-induced experimental dyspnea on medical residents.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

During a teaching session following the principles of experiential learning, emergency medicine residents were taught about dyspnea theoretically, observed experimental dyspnea in their teacher, and personally experienced self-induced dyspnea. The corresponding psychophysiological reactions were described. Immediate and 1-year evaluations were conducted to assess course satisfaction (overall 0-20 grade) and the effect on the understanding of what dyspnea represents for patients.

RESULTS

Overall, 55 emergency medicine residents participated in the study (26 men, median age 26 years). They were moderately satisfied with previous dyspnea teaching (6 [5-7] on a 0-10 numerical rating scale [NRS]) and expressed a desire for an improvement in the teaching (8 [7-9]). Immediately after the course they reported improved understanding of patients' experience (7 [6-8]), which persisted at 1 year (8 [7-9], 28 respondents). Overall course grade was 17/20 [15-18], and there were significant correlations with experimental dyspnea ratings (intensity: r = 0.318 [0.001-0.576], p = 0.043; unpleasantness: r = 0.492 [0.208-0.699], p = 0.001). In multivariate analysis, the only factor independently associated with the overall course grade was 'experiential understanding' (the experimental dyspnea-related improvement in the understanding of dyspneic patients' experience). A separate similar experiment conducted in 50 respiratory medicine residents yielded identical results.

CONCLUSIONS

This study suggests that, in advanced medical residents, the personal discovery of dyspnea can have a positive impact on the understanding of what dyspnea represents for patients. This could help fight dyspnea invisibility.

Testing the distributed representation hypothesis in object recognition in two open datasets

Neural representation has long been thought to follow the modularity hypothesis, which states that each type of information corresponds to a specific brain area. Though supported by many studies, this hypothesis surfers the pitfall of inefficiency for information encoding. To overcome difficulties the modularity representation hypothesis faced, researchers have proposed that information may be distributed represented in a specific brain area. The distributed representation hypothesis along with the multi-variate pattern approaches have made great success in detecting representation patterns in the previous decade. However, this hypothesis implicitly requires that the pattern should be transformed in a consistent way with respect to all of the represented information in the specific brain area. And the accuracy and validity of the prediction have never been thoroughly tested. Here in the present study, we tested this prediction in two open datasets compiling the object recognition. We validated the distributed representation patterns in the lateral occipital complex/ventral temporal gyrus where all six classifiers were capable of predicting the correct category represented. Furthermore, we correlated the classifiers' decision function values to the bold signals and found that the decision function value of the logistic regression classifier was exclusively correlated with activities of the same brain area in both datasets. These results support the distributed representation hypothesis and suggest that our neural system may be embedded within the algorithm of a specific classifier.

The neurologic pain signature responds to nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory treatment vs placebo in knee osteoarthritis

Supplemental Digital Content is Available in the Text.

fMRI-based measures, validated for nociceptive pain, respond to acute osteoarthritis pain, are not sensitive to placebo, and are mild-to-moderately sensitive to naproxen.

Introduction:

Many drug trials for chronic pain fail because of high placebo response rates in primary endpoints. Neurophysiological measures can help identify pain-linked pathophysiology and treatment mechanisms. They can also help guide early stop/go decisions, particularly if they respond to verum treatment but not placebo. The neurologic pain signature (NPS), an fMRI-based measure that tracks evoked pain in 40 published samples and is insensitive to placebo in healthy adults, provides a potentially useful neurophysiological measure linked to nociceptive pain.

Objectives:

This study aims to validate the NPS in knee osteoarthritis (OA) patients and test the effects of naproxen on this signature.

Methods:

In 2 studies (50 patients, 64.6 years, 75% females), we (1) test the NPS and other control signatures related to negative emotion in knee OA pain patients; (2) test the effect of placebo treatments; and (3) test the effect of naproxen, a routinely prescribed nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug in OA.

Results:

The NPS was activated during knee pain in OA (d = 1.51, P < 0.001) and did not respond to placebo (d = 0.12, P = 0.23). A single dose of naproxen reduced NPS responses (vs placebo, NPS d = 0.34, P = 0.03 and pronociceptive NPS component d = 0.38, P = 0.02). Naproxen effects were specific for the NPS and did not appear in other control signatures.

Conclusion:

This study provides preliminary evidence that fMRI-based measures, validated for nociceptive pain, respond to acute OA pain, do not appear sensitive to placebo, and are mild-to-moderately sensitive to naproxen.

Sex and gender differences in the development of empathy

The topic of typical sex and gender difference in empathy is examined in both a developmental and neuroscientific perspective. Empathy is construed as a multi-layered phenomenon with various degrees of complexity unfolding in ontogeny. The different components of empathy (i.e., affective, cognitive, and prosocial motivation) will be discussed as they interact and are expressed behaviorally. Significant sex/gender differences in empathy are discussed in relation to putative bottom-up or top-down processes underlying empathetic responses. The early onset and the pervasive presence of such sex/gender differences throughout the lifespan are further discussed in light of social and neurobiological modeling factors, including early socialization, brain's structural/functional variances, as well as genetics and hormonal factors.

Neural correlates of compassion - An integrative systematic review

Compassion is a psychological construct that has received increasing attention in recent years. Even though a lot of work has been done to identify neural correlates of empathy across studies, such work has not been properly done on neural correlates of compassion. Therefore, the aim was to systematically review the literature on neural correlates of compassion. We have searched through PsycINFO, PubMed and Web of Science for relevant articles published between 1985 and 2020. We included the studies (n = 35) examining the relationship between brain structure or function and compassion. Screening was performed by two authors, between whom a level of agreement was calculated. The quality of the studies was assessed by measures used in other studies as well by measures specific for our study aims. This study was conducted under PRISMA guidelines. Our analysis revealed that the most frequent neural associations with compassion across all analysed studies can be found in the orbital part of the left inferior frontal gyrus, in the right cerebellum, the bilateral middle temporal gyrus, in the bilateral insula and the right caudate nucleus. Our findings suggest that people displaying a lower compassion tend to have either lower neural activity or a grey matter volume in neural areas associated with reward.

Neural computations in children's third-party interventions are modulated by their parents' moral values

One means by which humans maintain social cooperation is through intervention in third-party transgressions, a behaviour observable from the early years of development. While it has been argued that pre-school age children's intervention behaviour is driven by normative understandings, there is scepticism regarding this claim. There is also little consensus regarding the underlying mechanisms and motives that initially drive intervention behaviours in pre-school children. To elucidate the neural computations of moral norm violation associated with young children's intervention into third-party transgression, forty-seven preschoolers (average age 53.92 months) participated in a study comprising of electroencephalographic (EEG) measurements, a live interaction experiment, and a parent survey about moral values. This study provides data indicating that early implicit evaluations, rather than late deliberative processes, are implicated in a child's spontaneous intervention into third-party harm. Moreover, our findings suggest that parents' values about justice influence their children's early neural responses to third-party harm and their overt costly intervention behaviour.

Somatic engagement alters subsequent neurobehavioral correlates of affective mentalizing

Socio‐emotional encounters involve a resonance of others' affective states, known as affect sharing (AS); and attribution of mental states to others, known as theory‐of‐mind (ToM). Empathy necessitates the integration of both processes, yet their interaction during emotional episodes and subsequent generation of inferences on others' affective states has rarely been tested. To address this, we developed a novel experimental design, wherein we manipulated AS by presenting nonverbal emotionally negative movies twice—each time accompanied by one of two soundtracks that accentuated either somatic cues or externally generated sounds. Movies were followed by questions addressing affective‐ToM (emotional inferences), cognitive‐ToM (inferences on beliefs and knowledge), and non‐ToM aspects. Results revealed a neural differentiation between AS, affective‐ToM, and cognitive‐ToM. AS movies activated regions that have been implicated in emotional (e.g., amygdala) and somatosensory processing, and synchronized brain activity between participants in the latter. Affective‐ToM activated the middle insula, limbic regions, and both ventral and dorsal portions of the medial prefrontal cortex (ventral medial prefrontal cortex [VMPFC] and dorsal medial prefrontal cortex [DMPFC], respectively), whereas cognitive‐ToM activated posteromedial and lateral–prefrontal and temporal cortices. Critically, AS movies specifically altered neural activation in AS and ToM‐related regions during subsequent affective‐ToM inferences, most notably in the DMPFC. Moreover, DMPFC–VMPFC connectivity correlated with affective‐ToM accuracy, when such questions followed AS movies. Our results associate empathic processes with designated neural activations and shed light on how neuro‐behavioral indices of affective ToM are shaped by preceding somatic engagement.

The relationship between empathic concern and perceived personal costs for helping and how it is affected by similarity perceptions

One explanation for the positive effect of state empathic concern on helping is that such other-focused feelings reduce helpers' perceptions of their personal costs for helping. Results from an experiment (N = 186) supported these assumptions and showed further that self-focused feelings of personal distress, another form of affective empathy, were a positive predictor of perceived costs. Moreover, I examined whether the strength of the negative relationship between empathic concern and personal costs depends on two forms of perceived similarity between the helper and the target, person similarity and experience similarity. For this purpose, I manipulated person similarity by portraying the target as either similar or dissimilar with regard to essential characteristics, and assessed experience similarity by asking whether or not participants share the target's negative experience. As predicted, the negative relationship between empathic concern and perceived personal costs was strongest when person similarity was high and experience similarity low.

The mutuality of social emotions: How the victim's reactive attitude influences the transgressor's emotional responses

Would a transgressor be guiltier or less after receiving the victim's forgiving or blaming attitude? Everyday intuitions and empirical evidence are mixed in this regard, leaving how interpersonal attitudes shape the transgressor's reactive social emotions an open question. We combined a social interactive game with multivariate pattern analysis of fMRI data to address this question. Participants played an interactive game in an fMRI scanner where their incorrect responses could cause either high or low pain stimulation to an anonymous co-player. Following incorrect responses, participants were presented with the co-player's (i.e., the victim's) attitude towards the harm (Blame, Forgive, or Neutral). Behaviorally, the victim's attitude and the severity of harm interactively modulated the transgressor's social emotions, with expectation violation serving as a mediator. While unexpected forgiveness following severe harm amplified the participants' guilt, unexpected blame following minor harm reduced the participants' guilt and increased their anger. This role of expectation violation was supported by multivariate pattern analysis of fMRI, revealing a shared neural representation in ventral striatum in the processing of victim's attitude-induced guilt and anger. Moreover, we identified a neural re-appraisal process of guilt in the transgressor, with the involvement of area related to self-conscious processing (i.e., perigenual anterior cingulate cortex) before knowing the victim's attitude transiting to the involvement of other-regarding related area (i.e., temporoparietal junction) after knowing the victim's attitude. These findings uncover the neurocognitive bases underlying the transgressor's social emotional responses, and highlight the importance of the mutuality of social emotions.

A distributed fMRI-based signature for the subjective experience of fear

The specific neural systems underlying the subjective feeling of fear are debated in affective neuroscience. Here, we combine functional MRI with machine learning to identify and evaluate a sensitive and generalizable neural signature predictive of the momentary self-reported subjective fear experience across discovery (n = 67), validation (n = 20) and generalization (n = 31) cohorts. We systematically demonstrate that accurate fear prediction crucially requires distributed brain systems, with important contributions from cortical (e.g., prefrontal, midcingulate and insular cortices) and subcortical (e.g., thalamus, periaqueductal gray, basal forebrain and amygdala) regions. We further demonstrate that the neural representation of subjective fear is distinguishable from the representation of conditioned threat and general negative affect. Overall, our findings suggest that subjective fear, which exhibits distinct neural representation with some other aversive states, is encoded in distributed systems rather than isolated 'fear centers'.

Does Self-Reassurance Reduce Neural and Self-Report Reactivity to Negative Life Events?

Whilst research has shown how self-criticism may increase both neural and self-report markers of negative emotion, less well-known is how self-reassurance—a compassionately-motivated cognitive self-relating style—may regulate negative emotion. Using fMRI, we invited participants to engage in self-criticism and self-reassurance toward written descriptions of negative life events (mistakes, setbacks, failures). Our results identify that neural markers of negative emotion and self-report markers of trial intensity during fMRI are down-regulated under conditions of self-reassurance, relative to self-criticism. Future work to control for autobiographical memory during this fMRI task is needed, as are controls for how well participants can engage in both thinking styles, to explore how memory/task engagement can contribute to self-reassurance and self-criticism. Engagement in self-reassurance can reduce the “sting” of negative life-events, both neural and self-report, which holds important implications for therapy.

Quality of early-life maternal care predicts empathy-like behavior in adult male rats: Linking empathy to BDNF gene expression in associated brain regions

Empathy is the ability to experience a shared affective state as others. It enhances group living and manifests itself as helping behavior towards a distressed person. It also can flourish by nurturing. Recent findings suggest that rodents exhibit empathy-like behavior towards their conspecifics. However, the role of early-life experiences (e.g., maternal care) is not clear on the development of empathy-like behavior. Moreover, brain-derived neutrophilic factor (BDNF) is a pivotal protein in modulating the brain's function and behaviors. Evidence suggests that the expression of the BDNF gene can be affected by the quality of maternal care. In this study, we questioned whether variation in maternal care modulates empathy-like behavior of male rats in adulthood. Additionally, gene expression of BDNF was measured in the amygdala, hippocampus, insula, anterior cingulate cortex, prefrontal cortex, and striatum in these adult male rats. Based on the pattern of maternal care, the offspring were divided into high maternal care (HMC) and low maternal care (LMC) groups. We confirmed that the early-life experience of HMC significantly promoted the empathy-like behavior of rats in adulthood compared to LMC. In terms of gene expression, the HMC group consistently had higher BDNF gene expression in all studied regions, except anterior cingulate cortex which groups were not different. Taken together, it suggests that maternal care in infancy predicts empathy-like behavior in adulthood and differences in BDNF gene expression in different brain regions may reflect the underlying mechanism.

Taking a Computational Cultural Neuroscience Approach to Study Parent-Child Similarities in Diverse Cultural Contexts

Parent-child similarities and discrepancies at multiple levels provide a window to understand the cultural transmission process. Although prior research has examined parent-child similarities at the belief, behavioral, and physiological levels across cultures, little is known about parent-child similarities at the neural level. The current review introduces an interdisciplinary computational cultural neuroscience approach, which utilizes computational methods to understand neural and psychological processes being involved during parent-child interactions at intra- and inter-personal level. This review provides three examples, including the application of intersubject representational similarity analysis to analyze naturalistic neuroimaging data, the usage of computer vision to capture non-verbal social signals during parent-child interactions, and unraveling the psychological complexities involved during real-time parent-child interactions based on their simultaneous recorded brain response patterns. We hope that this computational cultural neuroscience approach can provide researchers an alternative way to examine parent-child similarities and discrepancies across different cultural contexts and gain a better understanding of cultural transmission processes.

Overlapping and specific neural correlates for empathizing, affective mentalizing, and cognitive mentalizing: A coordinate-based meta-analytic study

While the discussion on the foundations of social understanding mainly revolves around the notions of empathy, affective mentalizing, and cognitive mentalizing, their degree of overlap versus specificity is still unclear. We took a meta-analytic approach to unveil the neural bases of cognitive mentalizing, affective mentalizing, and empathy, both in healthy individuals and pathological conditions characterized by social deficits such as schizophrenia and autism. We observed partially overlapping networks for cognitive and affective mentalizing in the medial prefrontal, posterior cingulate, and lateral temporal cortex, while empathy mainly engaged fronto-insular, somatosensory, and anterior cingulate cortex. Adjacent process-specific regions in the posterior lateral temporal, ventrolateral, and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex might underpin a transition from abstract representations of cognitive mental states detached from sensory facets to emotionally-charged representations of affective mental states. Altered mentalizing-related activity involved distinct sectors of the posterior lateral temporal cortex in schizophrenia and autism, while only the latter group displayed abnormal empathy related activity in the amygdala. These data might inform the design of rehabilitative treatments for social cognitive deficits.

Synchrony with distress in affective empathy and compassion

Sensitivity to suffering of others is a core factor in social cohesion and evolutionary success. The emergence of such sensitivity may occur via two neuro-functional mechanisms. One is sharing the pain and distress of others, which relies on affective empathy. The other involves a caring concern for others' wellbeing, termed compassion. Both affective empathy and compassion are triggered by cues of pain and distress, exhibited by suffering targets. Yet, the mechanisms underlying distress processing in empathy and compassion are not clear. In the current research, we investigated synchrony with a target's distress, as a putative mechanism for continuous processing of distress cues. Participants viewed a video of a target in distress when given two different instructions: they were asked to continuously rate their distress in the affective empathy condition, or their feelings of care in the compassion condition. We used these dynamic ratings as well as participants' autonomic and facial responses to assess multi-channel synchrony with the target's self-rated distress fluctuations. Dynamic ratings and facial corrugator responses were significantly positively synchronized with the target's distress. For the corrugator responses, synchrony with the target was more pronounced than synchrony with participants' own ratings. Autonomic responses exhibited negative synchrony with the target's distress. Synchrony was higher in the affective empathy than in the compassion condition, across channels. These results point to the key role of subjective and physiological synchrony with the target's distress in empathic sharing of negative experiences. They also highlight the attenuation of embodied resonance with distress in compassionate experiences.

Neurocognitive mechanisms underlying improvement of prosocial responses by a novel implicit compassion promotion task

Compassion is closely associated with prosocial behavior. Although there is growing interest in developing strategies that cultivate compassion, most available strategies rely on effortful reflective processes. Furthermore, few studies have investigated neurocognitive mechanisms underlying compassion-dependent improvement of prosocial responses. We devised a novel implicit compassion promotion task that operates based on association learning and examined its prosocial effects in two independent experiments. In Experiment 1, healthy adults were assigned to either the compassion or control group. For the intervention task, the compassion group completed word fragments that were consistently related to compassionate responses toward others; in contrast, the control group completed word fragments related to emotionally neutral responses toward others. Following the intervention task, we measured attentional biases to fearful, sad, and happy faces. Prosocial responses were assessed using two measures of helping: the pen-drop test and the helping intentions rating test. In Experiment 2, independent groups of healthy adults completed the same intervention tasks used in Experiment 1. Inside a functional MRI scanner, participants rated empathic care and distress based on either distressful or neutral video clips. Outside the scanner, we assessed the degree of helping intentions toward the victims depicted in the distressful clips. The results of Experiment 1 showed that the compassion promotion task reduced attentional vigilance to fearful faces, which in turn mediated a compassion promotion task-dependent increase in helping intentions. In Experiment 2, relative to the control group, the compassion group showed reduced empathic distress and increased activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex in response to others' suffering. Furthermore, increased functional connectivity of the medial orbitofrontal and inferior parietal cortex, predicted by reduced empathic distress, explained the increase in helping intentions. These results suggest the potential of implicit compassion promotion intervention to modulate compassion-related and prosocial responses as well as highlight the brain activation and connectivity related to these responses, contributing to our understanding of the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying compassion-dependent prosocial improvement.

The neuroscience of empathy and compassion in pro-social behavior

Research in the scientific literature increasingly demonstrates that empathy consists of multiple dimensions, and that defining empathy as a single encompassing term may be imprecise. Recent calls have been made for increasing empathy as means to increase pro-social behavior. However, contradictory evidence exists that empathy may reduce pro-social behavior. This debate has sparked confusion around what is empathy, along with the value of empathy in promoting pro-social behavior. This paper will examine recent advances in affective neuroscience to better understand the construct of empathy and its relationship to pro-social behavior. Individuals' responses to affective empathy, seeing the suffering of others can result in personal distress or empathic concern, which may then subsequently affect motivation for pro-social behavior. Current research in affective neuroscience suggests that combining compassion interventions in conjunction with both affective and cognitive empathy offers the most optimal likelihood that individuals will engage in pro-social behavior.

A Feature-Based Network Analysis and fMRI Meta-Analysis Reveal Three Distinct Types of Prosocial Decisions

Tasks that measure correlates of prosocial decision-making share one common feature: agents can make choices that increase the welfare of a beneficiary. However, prosocial decisions vary widely as a function of other task features. The diverse ways that prosociality is defined and the heterogeneity of prosocial decisions have created challenges for interpreting findings across studies and identifying their neural correlates. To overcome these challenges, we aimed to organize the prosocial decision-making task space of neuroimaging studies. We conducted a systematic search for studies in which participants made decisions to increase the welfare of others during functional magnetic resonance imaging. We identified shared and distinct features of these tasks and employed an unsupervised graph-based approach to assess how various forms of prosocial decision-making are related in terms of their low-level components (e.g. task features like potential cost to the agent or potential for reciprocity). Analyses uncovered three clusters of prosocial decisions, which we labeled as cooperation, equity and altruism. This feature-based representation of the task structure was supported by results of a neuroimaging meta-analysis that each type of prosocial decisions recruited diverging neural systems. Results clarify some of the existing heterogeneity in how prosociality is conceptualized and generate insight for future research and task paradigm development.

Decreased Basal Ganglia Volume in Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy

Background and Purpose

Cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) is a common pathology of the leptomeningeal and cortical small vessels associated with hemorrhagic and non-hemorrhagic brain injury. Given previous evidence for CAA-related loss of cortical thickness and white matter volume, we hypothesized that CAA might also cause tissue loss in the basal ganglia.

Methods

We compared basal ganglia volumes expressed as a percentage of total intracranial volume (pBGV) of non-demented patients with sporadic and hereditary CAA to age-matched healthy control (HC) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) cohorts.

Results

Patients with sporadic CAA had lower pBGV (n=80, 1.16%±0.14%) compared to HC (n=80, 1.30%±0.13%, P<0.0001) and AD patients (n=80, 1.23%±0.11%, P=0.001). Similarly, patients with hereditary CAA demonstrated lower pBGV (n=25, 1.26%±0.17%) compared to their matched HC (n=25, 1.36%±0.15%, P=0.036). Using a measurement of normalized basal ganglia width developed for analysis of clinical-grade magnetic resonance images, we found smaller basal ganglia width in patients with CAA-related lobar intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH; n=93, 12.35±1.47) compared to age-matched patients with hypertension-related deep ICH (n=93, 13.46±1.51, P<0.0001) or HC (n=93, 15.45±1.22, P<0.0001). Within the sporadic CAA research cohort, decreased basal ganglia volume was independently correlated with greater cortical gray matter atrophy (r=0.45, P<0.0001), increased basal ganglia fractional anisotropy (r=–0.36, P=0.001), and worse performance on language processing (r=0.35, P=0.003), but not with cognitive tests of executive function or processing speed.

Conclusions

These findings suggest an independent effect of CAA on basal ganglia tissue loss, indicating a novel mechanism for CAA-related brain injury and neurologic dysfunction.

Dispositional empathy predicts primary somatosensory cortex activity while receiving touch by a hand

Previous research revealed an active network of brain areas such as insula and anterior cingulate cortex when witnessing somebody else in pain and feeling empathy. But numerous studies also suggested a role of the somatosensory cortices for state and trait empathy. While recent studies highlight the role of the observer’s primary somatosensory cortex when seeing painful or nonpainful touch, the interaction of somatosensory cortex activity with empathy when receiving touch on the own body is unknown. The current study examines the relationship of touch related somatosensory cortex activity with dispositional empathy by employing an fMRI approach. Participants were touched on the palm of the hand either by the hand of an experimenter or by a rubber hand. We found that the BOLD responses in the primary somatosensory cortex were associated with empathy personality traits personal distress and perspective taking. This relationship was observed when participants were touched both with the experimenter’s real hand or a rubber hand. What is the reason for this link between touch perception and trait empathy? We argue that more empathic individuals may express stronger attention both to other’s human perceptions as well as to the own sensations. In this way, higher dispositional empathy levels might enhance tactile processing by top-down processes. We discuss possible implications of these findings.

Belief in Altruistic Motives Predicts Prosocial Actions and Inferences

Are humans ever truly altruistic? Or are all actions, however noble, ultimately motivated by self-interest? Psychologists and philosophers have long grappled with this question, but few have considered laypeople's beliefs about the nature of prosocial motives. Here we examine these beliefs and their social correlates across two experiments (N = 445). We find that people tend to believe humans can be, and frequently are, altruistically motivated-echoing prior work. Moreover, people who more strongly believe in altruistic motives act more prosocially themselves-for instance, sacrificing greater amounts of money and time to help others-a relationship that holds even when controlling for trait empathy. People who believe in altruistic motives also judge other prosocial agents to be more genuinely kind, especially when agents' motives are ambiguous. Lastly, people independently show a self-serving bias-believing their own motives for prosociality are more often altruistic than others'. Overall, this work suggests that believing in altruistic motives predicts the extent to which people both see altruism and act prosocially, possibly reflecting the self-fulfilling nature of such lay theories.

Crowdsourcing in Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience

Behavioral research in cognitive and human systems neuroscience has been largely carried out in-person in laboratory settings. Underpowering and lack of reproducibility due to small sample sizes have weakened conclusions of these investigations. In other disciplines, such as neuroeconomics and social sciences, crowdsourcing has been extensively utilized as a data collection tool, and a means to increase sample sizes. Recent methodological advances allow scientists, for the first time, to test online more complex cognitive, perceptual, and motor tasks. Here we review the nascent literature on the use of online crowdsourcing in cognitive and human systems neuroscience. These investigations take advantage of the ability to reliably track the activity of a participant's computer keyboard, mouse, and eye gaze in the context of large-scale studies online that involve diverse research participant pools. Crowdsourcing allows for testing the generalizability of behavioral hypotheses in real-life environments that are less accessible to lab-designed investigations. Crowdsourcing is further useful when in-laboratory studies are limited, for example during the current COVID-19 pandemic. We also discuss current limitations of crowdsourcing research, and suggest pathways to address them. We conclude that online crowdsourcing is likely to widen the scope and strengthen conclusions of cognitive and human systems neuroscience investigations.

Effects of Compassion Training on Brain Responses to Suffering other

Compassion meditation (CM) is a promising intervention for enhancing compassion, although its active ingredients and neurobiological mechanisms are not well-understood. To investigate these, we conducted a three-armed placebo-controlled randomized trial (N = 57) with longitudinal functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We compared a 4-week CM program delivered by smartphone application with (i) a placebo condition, presented to participants as the compassion-enhancing hormone oxytocin, and (ii) a condition designed to control for increased familiarity with suffering others, an element of CM which may promote compassion. At pre- and post-intervention, participants listened to compassion-eliciting narratives describing suffering others during fMRI. CM increased brain responses to suffering others in the medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) relative to the familiarity condition, p < 0.05 family-wise error rate corrected. Among CM participants, individual differences in increased mOFC responses positively correlated with increased compassion-related feelings and attributions, r = 0.50, p = 0.04. Relative to placebo, the CM group exhibited a similar increase in mOFC activity at an uncorrected threshold of P < 0.001 and 10 contiguous voxels. We conclude that the mOFC, a region closely related to affiliative affect and motivation, is an important brain mechanism of CM. Effects of CM on mOFC function are not explained by familiarity effects and are partly explained by placebo effects.

The self in context: brain systems linking mental and physical health

Increasing evidence suggests that mental health and physical health are linked by neural systems that jointly regulate somatic physiology and high-level cognition. Key systems include the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the related default-mode network. These systems help to construct models of the 'self-in-context', compressing information across time and sensory modalities into conceptions of the underlying causes of experience. Self-in-context models endow events with personal meaning and allow predictive control over behaviour and peripheral physiology, including autonomic, neuroendocrine and immune function. They guide learning from experience and the formation of narratives about the self and one's world. Disorders of mental and physical health, especially those with high co-occurrence and convergent alterations in the functionality of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the default-mode network, could benefit from interventions focused on understanding and shaping mindsets and beliefs about the self, illness and treatment.

Comparison of the Effectiveness of an Abbreviated Program versus a Standard Program in Mindfulness, Self-Compassion and Self-Perceived Empathy in Tutors and Resident Intern Specialists of Family and Community Medicine and Nursing in Spain

Health professionals are among the most vulnerable to work stress and emotional exhaustion problems. These health professionals include tutors and resident intern specialists, due to the growing demand for the former and the high work overload of the latter. Mindfulness training programs can support these professionals during times of crisis, such as the current global pandemic caused by the coronavirus-19 disease. The objective of this study was to compare the effectiveness of an abbreviated Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) training program in relation to a standard training program on the levels of mindfulness, self-compassion, and self-perceived empathy in tutors and resident intern specialists of Family and Community Medicine and Nursing. A total of 112 professionals attached to six Spanish National Health System teaching units (TUs) participated in this randomized and controlled clinical trial. Experimental Group (GE) participants were included in the standard or abbreviated MBSR programs. The Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), the Self-Compassion Scale short form (SCS-SF), and the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy (JSPE) were administered three times during the study: before, immediately after, and 3 months after the intervention. Adjusted covariance analysis (ANCOVA), using pretest scores as the covariate, showed a significant increase in mindfulness (F(2,91) = 3.271; p = 0.042; η2 = 0.067) and self-compassion (F(2,91) = 6.046; p = 0.003; η2 = 0.117) in the post-test visit, and in self-compassion (F(2,79) = 3.880; p = 0.025; η2 = 0.089) in the follow-up visit, attributable to the implementation of the standard training program. The standard MBSR and MSC training program improves levels of mindfulness and self-compassion, and promotes long-lasting effects in tutors and resident intern specialists. New studies are needed to demonstrate the effectiveness of abbreviated training programs.

Observation of others' painful heat stimulation involves responses in the spinal cord

Observing others' aversive experiences is central to know what is dangerous for ourselves. Hence, observation often elicits behavioral and physiological responses comparable to first-hand aversive experiences and engages overlapping brain activation. While brain activation to first-hand aversive experiences relies on connections to the spinal cord, it is unresolved whether merely observing aversive stimulation also involves responses in the spinal cord. Here, we show that observation of others receiving painful heat stimulation involves neural responses in the spinal cord, located in the same cervical segment as first-hand heat pain. However, while first-hand painful experiences are coded within dorsolateral regions of the spinal cord, observation of others' painful heat stimulation involves medial regions. Dorsolateral areas that process first-hand pain exhibit negative responses when observing pain in others. Our results suggest a distinct processing between self and others' pain in the spinal cord when integrating social information.

Self-Oriented Empathy and Compassion Fatigue: The Serial Mediation of Dispositional Mindfulness and Counselor's Self-Efficacy

This study aimed to explore the association between self-oriented empathy and compassion fatigue, and examine the potential mediating roles of dispositional mindfulness and the counselor's self-efficacy. A total of 712 hotline psychological counselors were recruited from the Mental Health Service Platform at Central China Normal University, Ministry of Education during the outbreak of Corona Virus Disease 2019, then were asked to complete the questionnaires measuring self-oriented empathy, compassion fatigue, dispositional mindfulness, and counselor's self-efficacy. Structural equation modeling was utilized to analyze the possible associations and explore potential mediations. In addition to reporting confidence intervals (CI), we employed a new method named model-based constrained optimization procedure to test hypotheses of indirect effects. Results showed that self-oriented empathy was positively associated with compassion fatigue. Dispositional mindfulness and counselor's self-efficacy independently and serially mediated the associations between self-oriented empathy and compassion fatigue. The findings of this study confirmed and complemented the etiological and the multi-factor model of compassion fatigue. Moreover, the results indicate that it is useful and necessary to add some training for increasing counselor's self-efficacy in mindfulness-based interventions in order to decrease compassion fatigue.