Abstract
Empathy is critical to the quality of our relationships with others and plays an important role in life satisfaction and well-being. The scientific investigation of empathy has focused on characterizing its cognitive and neural substrates, and has pointed to the importance of 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, 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 some of the crucial demands of empathy, and a careful investigation of this possibility could make a significant contribution to the neuroscientific understanding 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. Unlike healthy comparison participants, in response to the empathy inductions hippocampal patients reported no increase in empathy ratings or prosocial behavior. The results provide preliminary evidence for a role for hippocampal declarative memory in empathy.
Highlights
The scientific investigation of empathy has become a cornerstone of the study of social cognition (Preston and de Waal, 2002; Adolphs, 2003)
INTERIM DISCUSSION These results provide preliminary evidence for lower trait cognitive and emotional empathy on some measures in patients with hippocampal amnesia than in healthy comparison participants, both matched to the patients and group norms in the literature
These questionnaires likely require some degree of declarative memory to recall how one responded in a particular situation in the past or to imagine how one might respond in the future
Summary
The scientific investigation of empathy has become a cornerstone of the study of social cognition (Preston and de Waal, 2002; Adolphs, 2003). The purpose of the current study is to investigate the contribution of the hippocampus to empathy. Whereas the hippocampus and its core processing features have not previously been a focus of empathy research, our motivation for their inclusion is based on the role of the hippocampus in declarative (relational) memory (Cohen and Eichenbaum, 1993; Eichenbaum and Cohen, 2001) and a set of empirical findings with neurological patients with hippocampal amnesia pointing to deficits in various aspects of social behavior. We have heard anecdotal reports from the family members of patients with amnesia that these individuals have post-morbid changes in the ability to understand or predict the thoughts and feelings of others, and to display compassion or offer help to others in need, suggesting there may be disruptions in empathy and prosocial behavior. We extend this proposal to examine the contribution of the hippocampus to empathy
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