Empathy and the brain

© 2008-2014, Gwen Dewar, Ph.D., all rights reserved

Human empathy depends on the ability to share the emotions of others, to experience what other people feel.

It is regarded by many people equally the foundation of moral behavior.

Simply to some, the concept seems rather blusterous-fairy. What does it hateful to say "I feel your hurting"? Isn't that simply a fanciful flying of the imagination?

No.

For one affair, it turns out nonhuman animals–even mice and geese–show prove of empathy (Decety et al 2016).

For another, empathy has a neurological basis.

The aforementioned brain regions that process our first-hand experiences of pain are also activated when we observe other people in hurting.

Moreover, when we discover the emotional signals of others, we recruit brain regions associated with theory of heed, the mechanism that permits us to take the perspective of another person (Schulte-Rüther et al 2007).

This theory of mind mechanism, along with the ability to proceed our own emotional reactions under control, may exist of crucial importance for showing empathic concern, or sympathy. If I don't consider your perspective and control my impulses, I might react to your hurting as if information technology's primarily an irritant or assault onme.

So empathy and empathic concern aren't just ideas. They are rooted in physical, measurable, physical phenomena, and are part of our nature. That doesn't hateful we aren't heavily influenced by ideas, but it suggests that humans don't depend on entirely on cultural grooming to develop a sense of empathy.

Here's a quick guide to the biological science of empathy, including information about the evolution of empathy in children.

Empathy in nonhuman animals

In 1 experiment, 15 rhesus monkeys were trained to get nutrient by pulling chains. Monkeys quickly learned that one concatenation delivered twice as much nutrient than the other. Simply and so the rules inverse. If a monkey pulled the chain associated with the bigger reward, another "bystander" monkey received an electric shock.

Afterward seeing their conspecific go a shock, x of the monkeys switched their preferences to the chain associated with the lesser food reward. Ii other monkeys stopped pulling either chain—preferring to starve rather than see some other monkey in pain (Masserman et al 1964).

Mice, too, answer to the display of pain by their companions. Researchers at McGill Academy put pairs of mice together and injected one or both of them with a substance that induces mild tum ache.

Mice reacted to the hurting past wriggling and stretching their legs. Just the intensity of the reaction depended on social cues. Mice wriggled and stretched more when their companions were as well in pain (Langford 2006).

Moreover, mice exposed to the sight of a suffering cage mate were quicker to dorsum away from an unpleasant heat source—suggesting that witnessing their companion's discomfort made mice more sensitive to their ain pain.

So in that location is nothing particularly human about finding the painful experiences of others unpleasant.

But why is "second-hand" pain unpleasant or upsetting?

Empathy in children

Trailblazing inquiry by neuroscientist Jean Decety suggests a fascinating neurological link between our own, first-hand experience of pain and our perception of pain in other people.

When typically developing kids (aged 7 to 12 years) were presented with images of people getting hurt, the kids experienced more than activity in the same neural circuits that process first-hand experiences of pain (Decety et al 2008).

This automatic response–termed "mirroring"–has been documented in a number of other studies, including studies of adults (Lamm et al 2011; Jackson et al 2006). The phenomenon may reflect the activation of mirror neurons, nerve cells that fire both when a person performs an action and he sees that activity being performed by others.

To date, researchers have identified specific neurons involved in the mirroring of manus movements in monkeys (Rizzolatti and Craighero 2004), and an heady new experiment has pinpointed specific regions of the premotor cortex (PMC) that permit humans to understand and imitate such movements:

When researchers selectively (and temporarily) knocked out one part of the PMC, people had more difficulty recognizing pantomimed hand actions, but not lip movements. Knocking out another, nearby region yielded the opposite upshot (Michael et al 2014).

No one however has isolated specific mirror neurons for hurting or emotion, but evidence in favor of their existence is accumulating (Corradini and Antonietti 2013).

More than mirrors

Mirror neurons may explain how nosotros can experience "second-hand" pain or emotion.

Only to respond with empathic concern, nosotros need other information, too.

Nosotros need to understand the perspectives of other people.

Nosotros also need to overcome our own negative reactions to the display of some other person'due south pain or distress.

Encephalon-imaging research seems to confirm this link betwixt theory of heed and empathy. For case, when people take been asked to evaluate the emotional facial expressions of others, they showed activation in the brain regions associated with theory of mind tasks (Schulte-Rüther et al 2007).

And theory of mind is probably important in other ways. For instance, Jean Decety and his colleagues take investigated how the encephalon distinguishes betwixt the victims of accidents and victims of aggression.

The neural basis of morality?

To better understand how theory of heed contributes to the perception of "2nd manus" hurting, Decety's team showed kids two sets of images. I prepare depicted people experiencing painful accidents. The other set showed people who were being victimized past aggressors (Decety et al 2008).

In both scenarios, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) revealed that simply looking at images activated brain regions associated with the offset-hand experience of hurting.

But when kids watched images of one person deliberately inflicting pain on some other person, additional brain regions (in the orbital medial frontal cortex and the paracingulate cortex) were activated.

Brain imaging research and studies of brain-damaged patients suggest that these regions are associated with social interaction, emotional self-control, and moral reasoning (Blair 2007; Sturm et al 2006).

Were the boosted brain regions activated because the kids were engaged in social and moral thinking? It seems very plausible.

The activation wasn't caused past the mere presence of multiple people in the images, because researchers controlled for that. And when kids were debriefed at the end of the experiment, most of them commented on the unfairness with which the victims had been treated.

Empathy and the brain: Why kids are cruel

The study mentioned above measured the responses of ordinarily-developing kids. What well-nigh kids who show a cruel streak?

Decety'southward group (2009) conducted a like fMRI study on teenage boys with conduct disorder, or CD.

This disorder is a serious psychiatric condition linked with behaviors like physical aggression, manipulative lying, sexual assault, cruelty to animals, vandalism, and bullying. It's also a precursor to antisocial personality disorder in adulthood (Lahey et al 2005).

Researchers screened boys (anile 16-eighteen) for CD, and showed them the same types of images of accidents and assaults mentioned higher up.

The results were very interesting.

I feel your hurting…and it makes me lash out

In some respects, the boys with CD responded like boys in the control group.

In item, the mirror neuron organization for pain was activated in both groups.

But there were dramatic differences.

First, the boys with conduct disorder experiencedless activation in brain regions associated with self-regulation, theory of mind, and moral reasoning.

Second, the boys with CD actually exhibited astronger"mirror" response to accidentally-acquired pain.

And, dissimilar controls, the boys with conduct disorder experienced strong, bilateral activation in the amygdala and striatum.

What does this mean? It's non clear. The amygdala processes emotion. And the striatum is activated by strong stimuli—both pleasurable and aversive.

And so there are at least two possibilities.

The aggressive boys might take gotten a pleasurable "kick" out of viewing the pain of others.

Just given that their own pain centers were strongly activated, information technology's also possible that observing second-hand pain triggered negative emotions—emotions that brand the boys bear more aggressively.

As Decety and his colleagues bespeak out, negative emotions—particularly in people with poor emotional control—tin can cause agitation and outbursts of aggression (Berkowitz 2003). This effect may be magnified in kids who have trouble distinguishing their own first-hand pain from the hurting of others.

Decety and colleagues speculate that boys with conduct disorder may experience high levels of agitation or distress when they experience second-hand pain. When this distress is combined with poor self-regulation of emotion, they lash out.

But whether second-mitt pain makes aggressive kids feel good or irritable, one thing seems pretty certain:

The brains of boys with conduct disorder respondedmore intensely to images of other people experiencing pain.

And this intensity was linked with the boys' aggressive tendencies. The more strongly a male child'southward brain responded to second-hand hurting, the more highly he scored on measures of daring and sadism.

Can empathy be taught?

Beast studies and brain scan research might brand us wonder if feeling empathy is a purely automatic process.

Simply, as noted to a higher place, empathy is really a package of abilities, and at that place is overwhelming evidence that empathy and empathic concern can exist shaped by feel and culture.

On the negative side, experiments suggest that exposure to media violence can desensitize united states of america, blunting the brain's response to second-hand pain (Guo et al 2013). It's too pretty clear that people downgrade the pain they perceive in victims when those victims are

• strangers (Meyer et al 2013)
• members of some other race or outgroup (Xu et al 2009; Hein et al 2010)
• or individuals marked by social stigma (Decety et al 2010).

That might audio bleak, just this aforementioned inquiry suggests ways that we might enhance empathy. For instance, it seems likely that we can increase empathy for members of outgroups by reflecting on the similarities between u.s.a..

For more data, see this commodity on the opens in a new windowimportance of fostering empathy and these practical tips for fostering empathy in kids.

---

---

References: Empathy and the brain

Blair RJR. 2007. The amygdale and ventromedial prefrontal cortex in morality and psychopathology. Trends in Cerebral Sciences 11: 387-392.

Corradini A and  Antonietti A. 2013. Mirror neurons and their function in cognitively understood empathy. Conscious Cogn. 22(3):1152-61.

Decety J, Bartal IB, Uzefovsky F, and Knafo-Noam A. 2016. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 371(1686).

Decety J, Echols S, and Correll J. 2010. The blame game: the effect of responsibility and social stigma on empathy for pain.J Cogn Neurosci. 22(five):985-97.

Decety J, Michalska K, and Akitsuki Y. 2008a. Who acquired the pain? An fMRI investigation of empathy and intentionality in children. 46(11):2607-14

Decety J, Michalska Thou, Akitsuki Y and Lahey BB. 2009. Atypical empathic responses in adolescents with aggressive conduct disorder: a functional MRI investigation. Biological Psychology lxxx(ii):203-1.

Guo X, Zheng Fifty, Wang H, Zhu L, Li J, Wang Q, Dienes Z, Yang Z. 2013. Exposure to violence reduces empathetic responses to other'due south pain. Brain Cogn. 82(ii):187-91.

Han S, Fan Y, Xu X, Qin J, Wu B, Wang Ten, Aglioti SM, and Mao L. 2009. Empathic neural responses to others' hurting are modulated past emotional contexts. Hum Brain Mapp. thirty(10):3227-37.

Jackson PL, Brunet E, Meltzoff AN, and Decety J. 2006. Empathy examined through the neural mechanisms involved in imaging how I experience versus how y'all feel hurting: An event-related fMRI study. Neuropsychologia 44: 752-761.

Lahey BB, Loeber R, Burke JD, and Applegate B. 2005. Predicting future antisocial personality disorder in males from a clinical assessment in childhood. J Consult Clin Psychol. 73(iii):389-99.

Langford DJ, Crager SE, Shehzad Z, Smith SB, Sotocinal SG, Levenstadt JS, Chanda ML, Levitin DJ, and Mogil JS. 2006. Social Modulation of Pain every bit Testify for Empathy in Mice. Science. 312(5782):1967-70.

Lamm C, Decety J, and Vocalist T. 2011. Meta-analytic evidence for common and distinct neural networks associated with directly experienced pain and empathy for pain. Neuroimage. 54(3):2492-502.

Masserman JH. Wechkin Due south, and Terris Due west. 1964. "Altruistic" beliefs in rhesus monkeys. American Journal of Psychiatry 121: 584-585.

Meyer ML, Masten CL, Ma Y, Wang C, Shi Z, Eisenberger NI, and Han S. 2013. Empathy for the social suffering of friends and strangers recruits singled-out patterns of brain activation. Soc Cogn Impact Neurosci. viii(4):446-54.

Michael J, Sandberg Grand, Skewes J, Wolf T, Blicher J, Overgaard 1000, and Frith CD. 2014. Continuous Theta-Flare-up Stimulation Demonstrates a Causal Role of Premotor Homunculus in Activeness Understanding. Psychological Science February 18, 2022 0956797613520608(epub ahead of print).

Rizzolatti Grand. and Craighero 50. 2004. The mirror-neuron arrangement. Annual Review of Neuroscience 27: 169-92.

Schulte-Rüther Thousand, Markowitsch HJ, Fink GR, and Piefke Grand. 2007.Mirror neuron and theory of mind mechanisms involved in face-to-face interactions: a functional magnetic resonance imaging approach to empathy. J Cogn Neurosci. 19(8):1354-72

Sturm VE, Rosen HJ, Allison South, Miller BL, and Levenson RW. 2006. Self-conscious emotion deficits in frontotemporal lobar degeneration. Brain 129: 2508-2516.

Walter H. 2012. opens in a new windowAuthor reply: Empathy and the Encephalon: How We Can Make Progress? Emotion Review iv(1): 22-23

Xu X, Zuo X, Wang X, Han S. 2009. Do you feel my pain? Racial grouping membership modulates empathic neural responses. J Neurosci. 29(26):8525-9

Content last modified ii/2014

image of boy & puppy ©iStockphoto.com/Eileen Hart;

prototype of mother hugging boy ©iStockphoto.com/Lise Gagne

image of father comforting girl ©iStockphoto.com/Sheryl Griffin

youngflemen.blogspot.com

Source: https://parentingscience.com/empathy-and-the-brain/

Share this post