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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 a...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10462016/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37645854 http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/2023.08.11.553004 |
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author | Oliva, Valeria Riegner, Gabriel Dean, Jon Khatib, Lora A. Allen, Alessandro Barrows, Daniel Chen, Conan Fuentes, Richard Jacobson, Aaron Lopez, Carolina Mosbey, Dwayne Reyes, Mikaila Ross, Jacob Uvarova, Alexandra Liu, Thomas Zeidan, Fadel |
author_facet | Oliva, Valeria Riegner, Gabriel Dean, Jon Khatib, Lora A. Allen, Alessandro Barrows, Daniel Chen, Conan Fuentes, Richard Jacobson, Aaron Lopez, Carolina Mosbey, Dwayne Reyes, Mikaila Ross, Jacob Uvarova, Alexandra Liu, Thomas Zeidan, Fadel |
author_sort | Oliva, Valeria |
collection | PubMed |
description | 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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10462016 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-104620162023-08-29 I feel your pain: Higher empathy is associated with higher posterior default mode network activity Oliva, Valeria Riegner, Gabriel Dean, Jon Khatib, Lora A. Allen, Alessandro Barrows, Daniel Chen, Conan Fuentes, Richard Jacobson, Aaron Lopez, Carolina Mosbey, Dwayne Reyes, Mikaila Ross, Jacob Uvarova, Alexandra Liu, Thomas Zeidan, Fadel bioRxiv Article 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. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory 2023-10-23 /pmc/articles/PMC10462016/ /pubmed/37645854 http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/2023.08.11.553004 Text en https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/) , which allows reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use. |
spellingShingle | Article Oliva, Valeria Riegner, Gabriel Dean, Jon Khatib, Lora A. Allen, Alessandro Barrows, Daniel Chen, Conan Fuentes, Richard Jacobson, Aaron Lopez, Carolina Mosbey, Dwayne Reyes, Mikaila Ross, Jacob Uvarova, Alexandra Liu, Thomas Zeidan, Fadel I feel your pain: Higher empathy is associated with higher posterior default mode network activity |
title | I feel your pain: Higher empathy is associated with higher posterior default mode network activity |
title_full | I feel your pain: Higher empathy is associated with higher posterior default mode network activity |
title_fullStr | I feel your pain: Higher empathy is associated with higher posterior default mode network activity |
title_full_unstemmed | I feel your pain: Higher empathy is associated with higher posterior default mode network activity |
title_short | I feel your pain: Higher empathy is associated with higher posterior default mode network activity |
title_sort | i feel your pain: higher empathy is associated with higher posterior default mode network activity |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10462016/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37645854 http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/2023.08.11.553004 |
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