Emotional contagion for pain is intact in autism spectrum disorders

N Hadjikhani,N Ward,E Lemonnier,O Rogier,T Ruest,C Gillberg,E Billstedt,P Solomon,K M Prkachin,N R Zürcher,L Hippolyte,A Lassalle,A Helles,N Gillberg

doi:10.1038/tp.2013.113

Abstract

Perceiving others in pain generally leads to empathic concern, consisting of both emotional and cognitive processes. Empathy deficits have been considered as an element contributing to social difficulties in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging and short video clips of facial expressions of people experiencing pain to examine the neural substrates underlying the spontaneous empathic response to pain in autism. Thirty-eight adolescents and adults of normal intelligence diagnosed with ASD and 35 matched controls participated in the study. In contrast to general assumptions, we found no significant differences in brain activation between ASD individuals and controls during the perception of pain experienced by others. Both groups showed similar levels of activation in areas associated with pain sharing, evidencing the presence of emotional empathy and emotional contagion in participants with autism as well as in controls. Differences between groups could be observed at a more liberal statistical threshold, and revealed increased activations in areas involved in cognitive reappraisal in ASD participants compared with controls. Scores of emotional empathy were positively correlated with brain activation in areas involved in embodiment of pain in ASD group only. Our findings show that simulation mechanisms involved in emotional empathy are preserved in high-functioning individuals with autism, and suggest that increased reappraisal may have a role in their apparent lack of caring behavior.

Highlights

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have impaired social understanding, and seemingly reduced reactions to others’emotions, which may be interpreted as lack of empathetic concern
We investigated whether the neural substrates of emotional and cognitive components of empathy are atypically activated in high-functioning participants with ASD when viewing dynamic facial expressions of real pain
During the functional magnetic resonance imaging session, the detection rate of the blue cross was similar in both groups, indicating that all participants paid attention to the stimuli

Summary

Introduction

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have impaired social understanding, and seemingly reduced reactions to others’emotions, which may be interpreted as lack of empathetic concern. Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have impaired social understanding, and seemingly reduced reactions to others’. Empathy can be defined as ‘the ability to form an embodied representation of another’s emotional state, while at the same time being aware of the causal mechanism that induced the emotional state in the other'.1. Empathy is a multicomponent process, consisting mainly of experience sharing and mental state attribution.[2] The evolutionary precursor of empathy is emotional contagion, a phylogenetically old phenomenon, even observable in distressed mice.[3] Emotional contagion is a precursor of emotional empathy,[4] whereby embodiment entails the forming of a representation of the other person’s feelings, and thereby sharing of their experience.[5] In the observer, this ‘perceptionaction’ coupling mechanism elicits the activation of the same neural networks as in the person experiencing the emotional state.[6]

Methods

Results

Conclusion