Abstract
Empathy, including cognitive and emotional empathy, refers to the ability to infer the mental states of others and to the capacity to share emotions. The neural mechanisms involved in empathy are complex and not yet fully understood, and previous studies have shown that both cognitive and emotional empathy are closely associated with the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). In this study, we examined whether empathy can be modulated by high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation (HD-tDCS) of the right IFG. Twenty-three healthy participants took part in all three experimental conditions (i.e., anodal, cathodal and sham stimulation) in a randomized order. Participants then completed the Chinese version of the Multifaceted Empathy Test (MET), which assesses both cognitive and emotional empathy. The results show that scores obtained for cognitive empathy following cathodal stimulation are significantly lower than those obtained following sham stimulation. In addition, scores obtained for cognitive empathy following anodal stimulation are higher than those obtained following sham stimulation, though the difference is only marginally significant. However, the results fail to show whether the stimulation of the right IFG via HD-tDCS plays a role in emotional empathy. Our results suggest that the right IFG plays a key role in cognitive empathy and indicate that HD-tDCS can regulate cognitive empathy by inducing excitability changes in the right IFG.
Highlights
As a sociocognitive ability, empathy plays a very important role in our interpersonal interactions (Decety and Cowell, 2014)
Relative to the sham stimulation, the cathodal stimulation generated a lower score for cognitive empathy while the anodal stimulation generated a higher score (Table 1), indicating that the active high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation (HD-Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS)) stimulation of the right IFC can regulate the accuracy of cognitive empathy
Our findings confirm that the cathodal HD-tDCS of the right IFC can lead to an impairment of cognitive empathy while anodal stimulation can spur an improvement
Summary
Empathy plays a very important role in our interpersonal interactions (Decety and Cowell, 2014) Empathy involves both cognitive and emotional components that correspond to two abilities, the first of which is the ability to infer the mental states of another (i.e., ‘‘I understand what you feel’’) and is described as cognitive empathy. Zaki (2016), for example, argued that prejudice resulting from processes of empathy described in Bloom is not the cause of empathy itself but rather reflects the motivations of the individual Despite this controversy, most current studies have supported the important role of empathy in our lives in enabling us to accurately recognize the emotions and behaviors of others and to respond appropriately (Fan et al, 2011). The study of empathic impairment is crucial to the study of empathy
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