Do social networks impact perceived loneliness in caregivers to older adults with chronic conditions?

The abstract is not published at this time to protect intellectual property

Effects of Social Networks and Caregiver Characteristics on Loneliness in Caregivers to Older Adults with Chronic Conditions

Caregivers to older adults with chronic conditions may experience physical and mental health issues, such as depression and loneliness, due to the stressful nature of providing daily care. Loneliness levels also may be affected by caregiving characteristics (e.g., time spent on caregiving per week), as well as differing levels of social support. Yet, few studies have specifically examined the relationship between loneliness, caregiving characteristics and social support in caregivers to older adults with chronic conditions. Understanding the risk factors for loneliness among caregivers may provide insights into ways to improve caregiver well-being. This study aims to investigate differences in loneliness between caregivers and non-caregivers and associations with caregiving and social network characteristics. In this study, participants will include healthy adult caregivers and non-caregivers who will complete a series of measures assessing loneliness, social support, social networks and caregiving characteristics. This information will be used to map social networks, social interaction frequency, and examine relationships with loneliness among caregivers and non-caregivers

Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Is Critical for Helping Others Who Are Suffering

Neurological patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) are reported to display reduced empathy toward others in their daily lives in clinical case studies. However, the empathic behavior of patients with damage to the vmPFC has not been measured experimentally in response to an empathy-eliciting event. This is important because characterizing the degree to which patients with damage to the vmPFC have lower empathic behavior will allow for the development of targeted interventions to improve patients’ social skills and in turn will help family members to better understand their impairments so they can provide appropriate supports. For the first time, we induced empathy using an ecologically-valid empathy induction in neurological patients with damage to the vmPFC and measured their empathic emotional responses and behavior in real time. Eight neurological patients with focal damage to the vmPFC were compared to demographically-matched brain-damaged and healthy comparison participants. Patients with damage to the vmPFC gave less money in the empathy condition to a person who was suffering (a confederate) than comparison participants. This provides the first direct experimental evidence that the vmPFC is critical for empathic behavior toward individuals who are suffering

Effects of age-related differences in empathy on social economic decision-making

Background: The ways in which aging affects social economic decision-making is a central issue in the psychology of aging. To examine age-related differences in social economic decision-making as a function of empathy, 80 healthy volunteers participated in the Repeated Fixed Opponent Ultimatum Game (UG-R). Previous economic decision-making research has shown that in younger adults empathy is associated with prosocial behavior. The effects of empathy on older adult social economic decision-making are not well understood. Methods: On each of 20 consecutive trials in the UG-R, one player (“Proposer”) splits $10 with another player (“Responder”) who chooses either to accept (whereby both receive the proposed division) or reject (whereby neither receives anything). Trait cognitive and emotional empathy were measured using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index. Results: UG-R data were examined as a function of age and cognitive empathy. For “unfair” offers (i.e. offers less than$5), older Responders with high cognitive empathy showed less prosocial behavior and obtained greater payoffs than younger Responders with high cognitive empathy. Conclusions: High levels of cognitive empathy may differentially affect economic decision-making behavior in younger and older adults. For older adults, high cognitive empathy may play a role in obtaining high financial payoffs while for younger adults it may instead be involved in facilitating social relationships

Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Is Critical for Helping Others Who Are Suffering

Neurological patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) are reported to display reduced empathy toward others in their daily lives in clinical case studies. However, the empathic behavior of patients with damage to the vmPFC has not been measured experimentally in response to an empathy-eliciting event. This is important because characterizing the degree to which patients with damage to the vmPFC have lower empathic behavior will allow for the development of targeted interventions to improve patients’ social skills and in turn will help family members to better understand their impairments so they can provide appropriate supports. For the first time, we induced empathy using an ecologically-valid empathy induction in neurological patients with damage to the vmPFC and measured their empathic emotional responses and behavior in real time. Eight neurological patients with focal damage to the vmPFC were compared to demographically-matched brain-damaged and healthy comparison participants. Patients with damage to the vmPFC gave less money in the empathy condition to a person who was suffering (a confederate) than comparison participants. This provides the first direct experimental evidence that the vmPFC is critical for empathic behavior toward individuals who are suffering

An Initial Study of Alexithymia and Its Relationship With Cognitive Abilities Among Mild Cognitive Impairment, Mild Alzheimer's Disease, and Healthy Volunteers

The present study examined the degree to which alexithymia is greater in mild Alzheimer's disease (AD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) relative to healthy volunteers (healthy comparison [HC]), and investigated relationships between alexithymia and cognition. Eighty-five participants (MCI = 30, AD = 21, HC = 34) underwent a comprehensive neuropsychological examination and completed the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20). Relative to HC, MCI and AD reported greater alexithymia total scores and higher scores on the TAS factor difficulty in identifying feelings (DIF). The remaining two factors, difficulty in describing feelings (DDF) and externally oriented thinking showed no significant group differences. In MCI, TAS-20 and DIF were negatively correlated with working and long-term verbal memory. In AD, TAS-20 was negatively correlated with general cognition, attention, memory, and visual spatial constructive and executive abilities. Also in AD, DIF was negatively correlated with general cognition, memory, and executive abilities. The correlation between DIF and long-term verbal memory in bothMCI and AD suggests a potential common mechanism for alexithymia in these neurocognitive disorders. Declines in verbal memory may hinder a patient's ability to recall an association between a given sensation and the episodic experience of that sensation, thus leading to difficulty identifying feelings, as measured by the DIF factor of the TAS-20

Feeling physical pain while depressed. The effect of alexithymia

Background: In the literature, depression and alexithymia are associated with greater pain perception. It is unknown whether depression and alexithymia have additive effects on perceived pain. Methods: The present study examined 152 participants (96 women, 56 men). Participants completed the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale, the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, the Brief Pain Inventory, and the NEO Personality Inventory. There were 49 participants in the active phase of depression with either definite (n = 15) or no alexithymia (n = 34). One hundred three participants showed no depression with either definite (n = 14) or no alexithymia (n = 89). Results: Pain severity showed a small but significant relationship with alexithymia and depression. Pain was greater among without alexithymia individuals who were depressed and among with alexithymia individuals who were not depressed. Individuals with combined presence of depression and alexithymia did not report greater pain than participants with either condition alone. Alexithymia, depression, and pain were significantly correlated with greater neuroticism. Conclusions: We did not find a summative effect of depression and alexithymia on perceived pain. One interpretation of this result is that neuroticism (a shared personality factor in both depression and alexithymia) may be partially responsible for the effect on pain

Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Is Critical for Helping Others Who Are Suffering

Neurological patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) are reported to display reduced empathy toward others in their daily lives in clinical case studies. However, the empathic behavior of patients with damage to the vmPFC has not been measured experimentally in response to an empathy-eliciting event. This is important because characterizing the degree to which patients with damage to the vmPFC have lower empathic behavior will allow for the development of targeted interventions to improve patients’ social skills and in turn will help family members to better understand their impairments so they can provide appropriate supports. For the first time, we induced empathy using an ecologically-valid empathy induction in neurological patients with damage to the vmPFC and measured their empathic emotional responses and behavior in real time. Eight neurological patients with focal damage to the vmPFC were compared to demographically-matched brain-damaged and healthy comparison participants. Patients with damage to the vmPFC gave less money in the empathy condition to a person who was suffering (a confederate) than comparison participants. This provides the first direct experimental evidence that the vmPFC is critical for empathic behavior toward individuals who are suffering

Empathy in hippocampal amnesia

The scientific investigation of empathy has become a cornerstone in the field of social cognition. Empathy is critical to the quality of our relationships with others and plays an important role in life satisfaction and well-being. Scientific investigations of empathy have focused on characterizing its cognitive and neural substrates, pointing to a network of brain regions involved in emotional experience and perspective taking (e.g., ventromedial prefrontal cortex, amygdala, anterior insula, cingulate). While the hippocampus has rarely been the focus of empathy research, we propose that there are compelling reasons to inquire about the contribution of the hippocampus to social cognition. We propose that the hallmark properties of the hippocampal declarative memory system (e.g., representational flexibility, relational binding, on-line processing capacity) make it well-suited to meet the demands of empathy. The present study is a preliminary investigation of the role of the hippocampal declarative memory system in empathy. Participants were three patients (1 female) with focal, bilateral hippocampal (HC) damage and severe declarative memory impairments and three healthy demographically matched comparison participants. Empathy was measured as a trait through a battery of gold standard questionnaires and through on-line ratings and prosocial behavior in response to a series of empathy inductions. Patients with hippocampal amnesia reported lower cognitive and emotional trait empathy than healthy comparison participants. In response to the empathy inductions, unlike healthy comparison participants, hippocampal patients reported no increase in empathy ratings or prosocial behavior from the control condition. Taken together, these results provide preliminary evidence for a role of hippocampal declarative memory in empathy

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<p>Neurological patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) are reported to display reduced empathy toward others in their daily lives in clinical case studies. However, the empathic behavior of patients with damage to the vmPFC has not been measured experimentally in response to an empathy-eliciting event. This is important because characterizing the degree to which patients with damage to the vmPFC have lower empathic behavior will allow for the development of targeted interventions to improve patients’ social skills and in turn will help family members to better understand their impairments so they can provide appropriate supports. For the first time, we induced empathy using an ecologically-valid empathy induction in neurological patients with damage to the vmPFC and measured their empathic emotional responses and behavior in real time. Eight neurological patients with focal damage to the vmPFC were compared to demographically-matched brain-damaged and healthy comparison participants. Patients with damage to the vmPFC gave less money in the empathy condition to a person who was suffering (a confederate) than comparison participants. This provides the first direct experimental evidence that the vmPFC is critical for empathic behavior toward individuals who are suffering.</p