I feel your pain: Higher empathy is associated with higher posterior default mode network activity

Empathy is characterized as the ability to share one’s experience. Recent findings indicate that the anterior mid-cingulate cortex (aMCC) and insular cortices play a role in empathy. For example, insular lesions lead to less empathetic behaviors. Further, neuroimaging studies revealed that viewing and/or mentalizing one’s romantic partner in pain produces higher aMCC and anterior insula activation. Said studies employed blood oxygen level dependent fMRI that may be less sensitive to comprehensively capture tonic empathetic responses to pain. Others have found that empathy for pain can elucidate self-other processing in pain-related brain regions (thalamus; somatosensory cortices). The present study investigated the differential neural empathetic responses elicited by viewing, in real-time, a female volunteer’s romantic partner (≥ 3 months) as compared to a stranger (laboratory technician) receive pain-evoking noxious heat during arterial spin labeling (ASL) fMRI acquisition. Based on prior work, we predicted that higher empathy would be associated with higher pain-related processing. Twenty-nine healthy females ([Formula: see text] age = 29 years) were administered a noxious “heat series” (ten, 8s 48°C plateaus; 240 seconds; left forearm) during ASL fMRI (3T GE MR750). Female volunteers, during fMRI acquisition, then viewed, with an MRI-compatible mirror, a “stranger” (laboratory technician) and then her romantic partner receive the same “heat series” in the MRI room. Visual analog scale (VAS; 0 = “not unpleasant” to 10 = “extremely unpleasant”) ratings for empathy (0 = “no pain” to 10 = “worst pain imaginable”) were collected from all participants after each scan. As predicted, female volunteers reported 33% higher empathy while viewing their romantic partner receive noxious heat as compared to the stranger (p = 0.01). Higher empathy ratings for the romantic partner, as compared to the stranger, were associated with greater activation in the dorsoposterior precuneus and the visual cortex. The present findings are the first to demonstrate that perfusion fMRI can be used to reliably capture empathetic processes and revealed novel insights in the role of the precuneus, a central node of the default mode network, in empathy and suggest that self-embodiment of another’s experience is associated with higher empathy.