Abstract
The ability to perceive, understand, and react to the feelings of others' pain is referred to as empathy for pain which is composed of two components, affective‐perceptual empathy and cognitive‐evaluative empathy. Recent reviews on the neural mechanisms of empathetic pain showed the anterior insula (AI) cortex as a core circuit for empathy. However, little is known about the modulation of brain anatomy and empathic responses by trait measures of empathy (trait empathy). Thus, we investigated whether individual variation in the personality trait of empathy is associated with individual variation in the structure of specific brain regions using voxel‐based morphometry (VBM). We further investigated the relationship between the trait empathy and the activity of the same regions using state measures of empathy for pain in a trial‐by‐trial fashion in the given situation. VBM analysis indicated a small but significant negative relationship between trait empathy and gray matter volume in the bilateral AI. Functional MRI study further demonstrated that experimentally induced activity of the bilateral AI during state empathy for pain was also correlated with trait empathy. An asymmetry exists between the right and left AI between the affective and cognitive empathy. The right AI was found to be involved in the affective‐perceptual form of empathy and the left AI was active in cognitive‐evaluative forms of empathy. The interindividual differences in trait empathy may be reflected both in the state empathy and more stable brain structure difference.
Highlights
Pain can be experienced by self or perceived in others, which is a special psychological state with great evolutionary significance (Jackson, Meltzoff, & Decety, 2005)
We used voxelbased morphometry (VBM) analysis combined with a functional MRI study to investigate whether individual differences in selfreported trait empathy was related to morphological differences and implicit neural responses in human anterior insula cortex
The critical findings were that interindividual differences in trait empathy might be reflected both in the situation-dependent effect of the state empathy and the situation-independent brain structure difference
Summary
Pain can be experienced by self or perceived in others, which is a special psychological state with great evolutionary significance (Jackson, Meltzoff, & Decety, 2005). The definition of empathy for pain differs from study to study, it can be broadly defined as experiencing a painfully affective or sensory state by a perceived individual, which consists of two forms: the “affective-perceptual” empathy and the “cognitive-evaluative” empathy. Previous functional MRI (fMRI) studies correlated the trait empathy with brain activities to empathy for pain. While changed in visual perspective of empathy-for-pain, only the right AI were positively correlated to affective-perceptual component of empathy (captured by a subscale of the IRI) (Vistoli et al, 2016). Another study found that the perception and assessment of others' pain was associated with significant bilateral activities in the anterior insula, but no activity was correlated with the IRI scores (Jackson et al, 2005). Individual trait empathy was associated with the activity in the left and right AI
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