Out of sight out of mind: Perceived physical distance between the observer and someone in pain shapes observer's neural empathic reactions

Social and affective relations may shape empathy to others' affective states. Previous studies also revealed that people tend to form very different mental representations of stimuli on the basis of their physical distance. In this regard, embodied cognition and embodied simulation propose that different physical distances between individuals activate different interpersonal processing modes, such that close physical distance tends to activate the interpersonal processing mode typical of socially and affectively close relationships. In Experiment 1, two groups of participants were administered a pain decision task involving upright and inverted face stimuli painfully or neutrally stimulated, and we monitored their neural empathic reactions by means of event-related potentials (ERPs) technique. Crucially, participants were presented with face stimuli of one of two possible sizes in order to manipulate retinal size and perceived physical distance, roughly corresponding to the close and far portions of social distance. ERPs modulations compatible with an empathic reaction were observed only for the group exposed to face stimuli appearing to be at a close social distance from the participants. This reaction was absent in the group exposed to smaller stimuli corresponding to face stimuli observed from a far social distance. In Experiment 2, one different group of participants was engaged in a match-to-sample task involving the two-size upright face stimuli of Experiment 1 to test whether the modulation of neural empathic reaction observed in Experiment 1 could be ascribable to differences in the ability to identify faces of the two different sizes. Results suggested that face stimuli of the two sizes could be equally identifiable. In line with the Construal Level and Embodied Simulation theoretical frameworks, we conclude that perceived physical distance may shape empathy as well as social and affective distance

Functional neuroanatomy of racial categorization from visual perception: A meta-analytic study

open8noThis work was supported by PRIN 2017 grant from the Ministero dell’istruzione, dell’università e della ricerca (MIUR, Italy) (Prot. 2017TBA4KS) and by a European Research Council (ERC), Consolidator Grant 2017 (772953) to MT.We effortlessly sort people into different racial groups from their visual appearance and implicitly generate racial bias affecting cognition and behavior. As these mental activities provide the proximate mechanisms for social behaviours, it becomes essential to understand the neural activity underlying differences between own-race and other-race visual categorization. Yet intrinsic limitations of individual neuroimaging studies, owing to reduced sample size, inclusion of multiple races, and interactions between races in the participants and in the displayed visual stimuli, dampens generalizability of results. In the present meta-analytic study, we applied multimodal techniques to partly overcome these hurdles, and we investigated the entire functional neuroimaging literature on race categorization, therefore including more than 2000 Black, White and Asian participants. Our data-driven approach shows that own- and other-race visual categorization involves partly segregated neural networks, with distinct connectivity and functional profiles, and defined hierarchical organization. Categorization of own-race mainly engages areas related to cognitive components of empathy and mentalizing, such as the medial prefrontal cortex and the inferior frontal gyrus. These areas are functionally co-activated with cortical structures involved in auto-biographical memories and social knowledge. Conversely, other-race categorization recruits areas implicated in, and functionally connected with, visuo-attentive processing, like the fusiform gyrus and the inferior parietal lobule, and areas engaged in affective functions, like the amygdala. These results contribute to a better definition of the neural networks involved in the visual parcelling of social categories based on race, and help to situate these processes within a common neural space.openBagnis A.; Celeghin A.; Diano M.; Mendez C.A.; Spadaro G.; Mosso C.O.; Avenanti A.; Tamietto M.Bagnis A.; Celeghin A.; Diano M.; Mendez C.A.; Spadaro G.; Mosso C.O.; Avenanti A.; Tamietto M

Insights From fMRI Studies Into Ingroup Bias

Intergroup biases can manifest themselves between a wide variety of different groups such as people from different races, nations, ethnicities, political or religious beliefs, opposing sport teams or even arbitrary groups. In this review we provide a neuroscientific overview of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies that have revealed how group dynamics impact on various cognitive and emotional systems at different levels of information processing. We first describe how people can perceive the faces, words and actions of ingroup and outgroup members in a biased way. Second, we focus on how activity in brain areas involved in empathizing with the pain of others, such as the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and anterior insula (AI), are influenced by group membership. Third, we describe how group membership influences activity in brain areas involved in mentalizing such as the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and temporoparietal junction (TPJ). Fourth, we discuss the involvement of the lateral orbitofrontal cortex (lOFC) in increased moral sensitivity for outgroup threats. Finally, we discuss how brain areas involved in the reward system such as the striatum and medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC), are more active when experiencing schadenfreude for outgroup harm and when rewarding ingroup (versus outgroup) members. The value of these neuroscientific insights to better understand ingroup bias are discussed, as well as limitations and future research directions

Dealing with others' physical pain reveals variance in empathic processes: Evidence from event-related potentials.

The present work consists of a review of 5 event-related potentials (i.e., ERPs) experiments I conducted, which deal with the multifaceted nature of human empathy for pain (Experiment 1) and variances in empathic processes, as a function of othersâ race (Experiment 2) and othersâ perceived trustworthiness, i.e. driven by facial features (Experiments 4-5), addressed through classical and modified versions of the pain decision task. The classical version of the pain decision task requires participants to decide whether presented stimuli (either pictures of individuals or body parts) receive either painful or neutral stimulation. Furthermore, prior to investigate trustworthiness as modulator of neural empathic response, I adopted in Experiment 3 a different paradigm, namely the change detection task, and a direct neural correlate of the resolution of visual working memory (i.e., VWM) representations to test whether trustworthiness is automatically extracted from faces biasing VWM processing. The main issue of the neuroscientific research on empathy for pain is about its multiple aspects. Indeed, neuroscientific research identified at least two subprocesses constituting empathy: Experience sharing and mentalizing. The former encompasses affective and sensorimotor aspects to inner feel the otherâs emotive state; the latter allows to infer/attribute the otherâs mental state. Experience sharing and mentalizing appear to be at least anatomically dissociated. One important aim of the present thesis is to provide evidence on the possible functional dissociation in the temporal domain. In Experiment 1 I addressed this issue by implementing a new version of the pain decision task. I presented participants with both sensorimotor (picture of a face with either painful or neutral expression) and contextual information (a sentence describing either a painful or neutral context) to highlight the deployment of electrophysiological reaction to pain related to the both subprocesses and I provided evidence of selective engagement of experience sharing and mentalizing into two time-windows. This is the starting point of the present studies on the way of exploring variance in neural empathic response. Previous studies suggested that people are more naturally empathic towards own-race individuals relative to other-race individuals (Avenanti et al., 2010; Xu et al., 2009). In Experiment 2 I provided compelling evidence that such preference is confined to experience sharing. Indeed, mentalizing is responsive to other-race pain. Although implicitly appraised, race of a face is processed quickly and automatically driven by physical facial features. Recently it has been demonstrated that evaluation of perceived individualsâ facial trustworthiness is appraised at first sight (Willis and Todorov, 2006), similarly to race. I hypothesized that trustworthiness, either in computerized faces (Experiment 4) and real faces (Experiment 5) plays another key role in modulating empathy even in the absence of previous knowledge on othersâ personality and social behavior because it can implicitly and quickly shape our social interactions. In an attempt to determine the efficacy of trustworthiness appraisal, I tested in Experiment 3 whether and how standardized physical facial features of trustworthiness (Oosterhof and Todorov, 2008) bias VWM processing even when task-irrelevant

Their pain is not our pain: brain and autonomic correlates of empathic resonance with the pain of same and different race individuals.

Recent advances in social neuroscience research have unveiled the neurophysiological correlates of race and intergroup processing. However, little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying intergroup empathy. Combining event-related fMRI with measurements of pupil dilation as an index of autonomic reactivity, we explored how race and group membership affect empathy-related responses. White and Black subjects were presented with video clips depicting white, black, and unfamiliar violet-skinned hands being either painfully penetrated by a syringe or being touched by a Q-tip. Both hemodynamic activity within areas known to be involved in the processing of first and third-person emotional experiences of pain, i.e., bilateral anterior insula, and autonomic reactivity were greater for the pain experienced by own-race compared to that of other-race and violet models. Interestingly, greater implicit racial bias predicted increased activity within the left anterior insula during the observation of own-race pain relative to other-race pain. Our findings highlight the close link between group-based segregation and empathic processing. Moreover, they demonstrate the relative influence of culturally acquired implicit attitudes and perceived similarity/familiarity with the target in shaping emotional responses to others' physical pain

Increasing self–other similarity modulates ethnic bias in sensorimotor resonance to others’ pain

The tendency to simulate the pain of others within our own sensorimotor systems is a vital component of empathy. However, this sensorimotor resonance is modulated by a multitude of social factors including similarity in bodily appearance, e.g. skin colour. The current study investigated whether increasing self–other similarity via virtual transfer to another colour body reduced ingroup bias in sensorimotor resonance. A sample of 58 white participants was momentarily transferred to either a black or a white body using virtual reality technology. We then employed electroencephalography to examine event-related desynchronization (ERD) in the sensorimotor beta (13–23 Hz) oscillations while they viewed black, white and violet photorealistic virtual agents being touched with a noxious or soft object. While the noxious treatment of a violet agent did not increase beta ERD, amplified beta ERD in response to black agent’s noxious vs soft treatment was found in perceivers transferred to a black body. Transfer to the white body dismissed the effect. Further exploratory analysis implied that the pain-related beta ERD occurred only when the agent and the participant were of the same colour. The results suggest that even short-lasting changes in bodily resemblance can modulate sensorimotor resonance to others’ perceived pain.Peer reviewe

Empathie bei Patienten mit multiplen somatoformen Symptomen und gesunden Kontrollen

Empathie ist essentiell für das Gelingen sozialer Interaktionen und wird häufig in Zusammenhang mit altruistischem Verhalten diskutiert. Als Therapeutenvariable ist Empathie wichtiger Untersuchungsgegenstand der Psychotherapieforschung. Als Patientenvariable im Sinne eines Bestandteils klinischer Symptomatik ist ein verändertes Empathieerleben bisher wenig im Fokus klinisch-psychologischer Forschung. Die vorliegende Arbeit liefert einen empirischen Beleg für Postulate gängiger neurowissenschaftlichen Modelle zur Modulation von Empathie, insbesondere auf Basis des Netzwerk-Modells (Engen & Singer, 2013), und untersucht erstmalig Empathie bei einer Gruppe von Somatisierungspatienten. In der ersten Studie wurde der Einfluss experimentell generierter Gruppen auf das Erleben von Schmerzempathie bei 30 gesunden Probanden mittels eines fMRT-Paradigmas untersucht. Auf der neuronalen Ebene zeigten sich Gruppeneinflüsse in Form von Aktivierungsdifferenzen in Arealen, welche mit analgetischen Prozessen und Schmerzhemmung assoziiert sind. Auf der Verhaltensebene hingegen ergaben sich keine Einflüsse der Gruppenzugehörigkeit. Untersuchungsgegenstand der zweiten Studie war der Zusammenhang zwischen Empathie, Somatisierung und Emotionsregulation. Hierzu wurden 48 Patienten mit multiplen somatoformen Symptomen und gesunden Kontrollen untersucht. Patienten gaben - im Vergleich zu Gesunden - eine höhere subjektive Belastung beim Erleben von Empathie und weiterhin ein breites Spektrum an emotionaler Dysregulation an. Zudem konnte gezeigt werden, dass ein Zusammenhang zwischen Somatisierung und Emotionsregulationsdefiziten besteht. Es wurde demonstriert, dass Gruppeneinflüsse auf Empathie in eingeschränktem Maße auch bei experimentell generierten Gruppen zu finden sind. Weiterhin konnte die Annahme, dass eine effektive Emotionsregulation das Erleben von Empathie beeinflusst und Emotionsregulationsprozesse exekutive Funktionen beinhalten, empirisch gestützt werden. Insgesamt wurde deutlich, dass Emotionsregulationsprozesse eng mit dem Erleben von Empathie verknüpft sind und daher in bestehende Modellvorstellungen von Empathie aufgenommen werden sollten