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Empathic pain evoked by sensory and emotional-communicative cues share common and process-specific neural representations

Pain empathy can be evoked by multiple cues, particularly observation of acute pain inflictions or facial expressions of pain. Previous studies suggest that these cues commonly activate the insula and anterior cingulate, yet vicarious pain encompasses pain-specific responses as well as unspecific pr...

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Autores principales: Zhou, Feng, Li, Jialin, Zhao, Weihua, Xu, Lei, Zheng, Xiaoxiao, Fu, Meina, Yao, Shuxia, Kendrick, Keith M, Wager, Tor D, Becker, Benjamin
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7505665/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32894226
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.56929
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author Zhou, Feng
Li, Jialin
Zhao, Weihua
Xu, Lei
Zheng, Xiaoxiao
Fu, Meina
Yao, Shuxia
Kendrick, Keith M
Wager, Tor D
Becker, Benjamin
author_facet Zhou, Feng
Li, Jialin
Zhao, Weihua
Xu, Lei
Zheng, Xiaoxiao
Fu, Meina
Yao, Shuxia
Kendrick, Keith M
Wager, Tor D
Becker, Benjamin
author_sort Zhou, Feng
collection PubMed
description Pain empathy can be evoked by multiple cues, particularly observation of acute pain inflictions or facial expressions of pain. Previous studies suggest that these cues commonly activate the insula and anterior cingulate, yet vicarious pain encompasses pain-specific responses as well as unspecific processes (e.g. arousal) and overlapping activations are not sufficient to determine process-specific shared neural representations. We employed multivariate pattern analyses to fMRI data acquired during observation of noxious stimulation of body limbs (NS) and painful facial expressions (FE) and found spatially and functionally similar cross-modality (NS versus FE) whole-brain vicarious pain-predictive patterns. Further analyses consistently identified shared neural representations in the bilateral mid-insula. The vicarious pain patterns were not sensitive to respond to non-painful high-arousal negative stimuli but predicted self-experienced thermal pain. Finally, a domain-general vicarious pain pattern predictive of self-experienced pain but not arousal was developed. Our findings demonstrate shared pain-associated neural representations of vicarious pain.
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spelling pubmed-75056652020-09-23 Empathic pain evoked by sensory and emotional-communicative cues share common and process-specific neural representations Zhou, Feng Li, Jialin Zhao, Weihua Xu, Lei Zheng, Xiaoxiao Fu, Meina Yao, Shuxia Kendrick, Keith M Wager, Tor D Becker, Benjamin eLife Neuroscience Pain empathy can be evoked by multiple cues, particularly observation of acute pain inflictions or facial expressions of pain. Previous studies suggest that these cues commonly activate the insula and anterior cingulate, yet vicarious pain encompasses pain-specific responses as well as unspecific processes (e.g. arousal) and overlapping activations are not sufficient to determine process-specific shared neural representations. We employed multivariate pattern analyses to fMRI data acquired during observation of noxious stimulation of body limbs (NS) and painful facial expressions (FE) and found spatially and functionally similar cross-modality (NS versus FE) whole-brain vicarious pain-predictive patterns. Further analyses consistently identified shared neural representations in the bilateral mid-insula. The vicarious pain patterns were not sensitive to respond to non-painful high-arousal negative stimuli but predicted self-experienced thermal pain. Finally, a domain-general vicarious pain pattern predictive of self-experienced pain but not arousal was developed. Our findings demonstrate shared pain-associated neural representations of vicarious pain. eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2020-09-07 /pmc/articles/PMC7505665/ /pubmed/32894226 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.56929 Text en © 2020, Zhou et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Zhou, Feng
Li, Jialin
Zhao, Weihua
Xu, Lei
Zheng, Xiaoxiao
Fu, Meina
Yao, Shuxia
Kendrick, Keith M
Wager, Tor D
Becker, Benjamin
Empathic pain evoked by sensory and emotional-communicative cues share common and process-specific neural representations
title Empathic pain evoked by sensory and emotional-communicative cues share common and process-specific neural representations
title_full Empathic pain evoked by sensory and emotional-communicative cues share common and process-specific neural representations
title_fullStr Empathic pain evoked by sensory and emotional-communicative cues share common and process-specific neural representations
title_full_unstemmed Empathic pain evoked by sensory and emotional-communicative cues share common and process-specific neural representations
title_short Empathic pain evoked by sensory and emotional-communicative cues share common and process-specific neural representations
title_sort empathic pain evoked by sensory and emotional-communicative cues share common and process-specific neural representations
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7505665/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32894226
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.56929
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