Abstract
Awareness of internal bodily sensations (interoceptive awareness; IA) and its connection to complex socioemotional abilities like empathy has been postulated, yet the functional neural circuitry they share remains poorly understood. The present fMRI study employs independent component analysis (ICA) to investigate which empathy facet (Cognitive or Affective) shares resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) and/or BOLD variability (rsBOLD) with IA. Healthy participants viewed an abstract nonsocial movie demonstrated to evoke strong rsFC in brain networks resembling rest (InScapes), and resultant rsFC and rsBOLD data were correlated with self-reported empathy and IA questionnaires. We demonstrate a bidirectional behavioral and neurobiological relationship between empathy and IA, depending on the type of empathy interrogated: Affective empathy and IA share both rsFC and rsBOLD, while Cognitive empathy and IA only share rsBOLD. Specifically, increased rsFC in the right inferior frontal operculum (rIFO) of a larger attention network was associated with increased vicarious experience but decreased awareness of inner body sensations. Furthermore, increased rsBOLD between brain regions of an interoceptive network was related to increased sensitivity to internal sensations along with decreased Affective empathy. Finally, increased rsBOLD between brain regions subserving a mentalizing network related to not only an improved ability to take someone’s perspective, but also a better sense of mind-body interconnectedness. Overall, these findings suggest that the awareness of one’s own internal body changes (IA) is related to the socioemotional ability of feeling and understanding another’s emotional state (empathy) and critically, that this relationship is reflected in the brain’s resting state neuroarchitecture. Methodologically, this work highlights the importance of utilizing rsBOLD as a complementary window alongside rsFC to better understand neurological phenomena. Our results may be beneficial in aiding diagnosis in clinical populations such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), where participants may be unable to complete tasks or questionnaires due to the severity of their symptoms.
Highlights
Internal body signals relative to emotion processing has been a topic of long-standing interest (Gurney, 1884; Strack et al, 1988), with more recent evidence highlighting an intriguing bidirectional relationship between sensations that arise internally and emotional phenomena (Cameron, 2001; Damasio, 2005; Lane, 2008; Craig, 2009)
We report a negative relationship between Affective empathy and internal body changes (IA)
We report a positive relationship between Cognitive empathy and IA
Summary
Internal body signals relative to emotion processing has been a topic of long-standing interest (Gurney, 1884; Strack et al, 1988), with more recent evidence highlighting an intriguing bidirectional relationship between sensations that arise internally and emotional phenomena (Cameron, 2001; Damasio, 2005; Lane, 2008; Craig, 2009). Neuroimaging findings corroborate a substantial overlap between the neural substrates of one’s own emotional and interoceptive processing. This highlights the proposed idea that interoception plays an important role in emotional self-assessment (Damasio et al, 2000; Terasawa et al, 2013; Adolfi et al, 2017; Critchley and Garfinkel, 2017). The relationship between signals arising from one’s own body and the emotions of another individual is a topic that remains relatively unexplored
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