Vicarious Responses Research Articles

Functional MRI Responses to Passive, Active, and Observed Touch in Somatosensory and Insular Cortices of the Macaque Monkey.

Neurophysiological data obtained in primates suggests that merely observing others' actions can modulate activity in the observer's motor cortices. In humans, it has been suggested that these multimodal vicarious responses extend well beyond the motor cortices, including somatosensory and insular brain regions, which seem to yield vicarious responses when witnessing others' actions, sensations, or emotions (Gazzola and Keysers, 2009). Despite the wealth of data with respect to shared action responses in the monkey motor system, whether the somatosensory and insular cortices also yield vicarious responses during observation of touch remains largely unknown. Using independent tactile and motor fMRI localizers, we first mapped the hand representations of two male monkeys' primary (SI) and secondary (SII) somatosensory cortices. In two subsequent visual experiments, we examined fMRI brain responses to (1) observing a conspecific's hand being touched or (2) observing a human hand grasping or mere touching an object or another human hand. Whereas functionally defined "tactile SI" and "tactile SII" showed little involvement in representing observed touch, vicarious responses for touch were found in parietal area PFG, consistent with recent observations in humans (Chan and Baker, 2015). Interestingly, a more anterior portion of SII, and posterior insular cortex, both of which responded when monkeys performed active grasping movements, also yielded visual responses during different instances of touch observation.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Common coding of one's own and others' actions, sensations, and emotions seems to be widespread in the brain. Although it is currently unclear to what extent human somatosensory cortices yield vicarious responses when observing touch, even less is known about the presence of similar vicarious responses in monkey somatosensory cortex. We therefore localized monkey somatosensory hand representations using fMRI and investigated whether these regions yield vicarious responses while observing various instances of touch. Whereas "tactile SI and SII" did not elicit responses during touch observation, a more anterior portion of SII, in addition to area PFG and posterior insular cortex, all of which responded during monkeys' own grasping movements, yielded vicarious responses during observed touch.

Corrections as multiparty accomplishment in L2 classroom conversations

Corrections as multiparty accomplishment in L2 classroom conversations

Distinct neural networks underlying empathy for pleasant and unpleasant touch

Distinct neural networks underlying empathy for pleasant and unpleasant touch

Affective empathy differs in male violent offenders with high- and low-trait psychopathy.

This study investigated affective and cognitive empathic processes in incarcerated violent offenders with lower and higher psychopathic traits and healthy controls. Participants witnessed painful expressions of others displayed on video clips. Skin conductance responses (SCR) were recorded to assess autonomic emotional arousal, and various empathy ratings were used as measures of self-reported vicarious responses. Reduced SCRs occurred during the observation of pain in others in lower and higher psychopathic-trait participants alike, compared to controls. Despite these diminished autonomic responses indicating reduced vicarious responses, only inmates with higher psychopathic traits provided empathy ratings comparable to those of the controls. These findings indicate that violent offenders display reduced autonomic arousal in response to distress cues of others, irrespective of psychopathy. However, only higher psychopathic-trait offenders were able to provide self-report in a way that let them appear to be as empathic as controls-enabling them to know, yet not to feel, what others feel.

Evidence for Vicarious Hope and Vicarious Gratitude

Theorists posit that well-being reflects an optimal balance of self- and other-interest. An index of other-interest may be the degree to which hope and gratitude concern others (termed vicarious hope and vicarious gratitude) in addition to concerning the self. We examined the frequency of vicarious responses generated by participants (N = 350) invited to list ten things for which they were hopeful or grateful. Results showed that, on average, about 13 % of participants’ responses were other-oriented, that such responses were more likely to occur in the hope than in the gratitude condition, and that they were more likely to occur in conditions where task instructions primed inclusion of others. The generation of vicarious responses correlated with the trait of empathic concern. Implications of these findings for future work on vicarious hope and vicarious gratitude are discussed.

Traumatogenic Processes and Pathways to Mental Health Outcomes for Sexual Minorities Exposed to Bias Crime Information

Vicarious traumatization of nonvictim members of communities targeted by bias crimes has been suggested by previous qualitative studies and often dominates public discussion following bias events, but proximal and distal responses of community members have yet to be comprehensively modeled, and quantitative research on vicarious responses is scarce. This comprehensive review integrates theoretical and empirical literatures in social, clinical, and physiological psychology in the development of a model of affective, cognitive, and physiological responses of lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals upon exposure to information about bias crimes. Extant qualitative research in vicarious response to bias crimes is reviewed in light of theoretical implications and methodological limitations. Potential pathways to mental health outcomes are outlined, including accumulative effects of anticipatory defensive responding, multiplicative effects of minority stress, and putative traumatogenic physiological and cognitive processes of threat. Methodological considerations, future research directions, and clinical implications are also discussed.

Mirror-like brain responses to observed touch and personality dimensions

The last years have shown a growing interest in research on the neural mechanisms for perceiving and understanding social interactions. Only very recently, a role for somatosensation in social perception has been suggested. Numerous studies reported vicarious responses in the primary somatosensory cortex (SI) and other areas merely when seeing others being touched. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that these vicarious somatosensory responses can be linked with inter-individual differences in empathy. However, beyond empathy other personality traits have been shown to interact with social perception and behavior. Here we tested if personality traits according to the Five-Factor-Model interact with vicarious activation in somatosensory brain regions. We conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study in which subjects viewed video clips showing simple non-painful touch to a hand and a control condition including the same visual and motion parts. Results revealed vicarious somatosensory activation when viewing the touched hand, as expected. Vicarious activation in SI showed a trend for a positive correlation with the personality trait openness to experience. Moreover, mirror-like responses in the insula were strongly correlated with the personality trait conscientiousness, suggesting links to processes of self-control. We conclude that vicarious brain responses to seen touch seem to interact with personality traits.

Dispositional empathy modulates vicarious effects of dynamic pain expressions on spinal nociception, facial responses and acute pain

Pain communication is thought to promote automatic vicarious self-protective responses as well as empathic concern towards others' suffering. This duality was recently highlighted in a study showing that highly empathic individuals display increased vicarious facilitation of low-level pain processing (nociceptive flexion reflex, NFR) combined with an unexpected reduced facilitation of self-pain perception (pain ratings) while viewing static pictures evoking pain in others. The present study sought to test further the moderating effects of dispositional empathy on vicarious responses induced by viewing dynamic pain expressions. Twenty-four healthy volunteers viewed 1-s videos showing different levels of pain expression before noxious electric shocks were delivered to the sural nerve. Viewing stronger pain expressions generally increased shock-pain unpleasantness ratings, the amplitude of the NFR, and facial responses (corrugator muscle) to the noxious stimulation. However, self-pain ratings (intensity and unpleasantness) increased less or were reduced following clips of pain expression in individuals scoring higher on the Empathy Quotient. These results suggest that vicarious processes facilitate low-level defensive responses, while the experience of self-pain and the associated negative affect may be partly tuned-down by higher-order empathic processes.

Vicarious Responses to Social Touch in Posterior Insular Cortex Are Tuned to Pleasant Caressing Speeds

Affective touch carries strong significance for social mammals, including humans. Gentle, dynamic touch of a kind that occurs during social interactions is preferentially encoded by a distinct neural pathway involving tactile C (CT) afferents, a type of unmyelinated afferent nerve found exclusively in hairy skin. CT afferents increase firing when the skin is stroked at a pleasant, caress-like speed of ∼3 cm/s, and their discharge frequency correlates with the subjective hedonic experience of the caress. In humans, the posterior insula is a cortical target for CT afferents. Since the potential social relevance of affective touch extends to the touch interactions of others, we postulated that information from CT afferents in posterior insular cortex provides a basis for encoding observed caresses. In two experiments, we exploited CT afferents' functionally unique tuning curve for stroking speed, demonstrating that a speed optimal for eliciting CT discharge (3 cm/s) also gives rise to higher BOLD responses in posterior insula than a nonoptimal speed (30 cm/s). When participants viewed videos of others' arms being stroked at CT-optimal versus -nonoptimal speeds, the posterior insula showed a similar response as to directly felt touch. Further, this region's response was specific for social interactions, showing no CT-related modulation for nonsocial dynamic-touch videos. These findings provide direct evidence for a functional relationship between CT signaling and processing in posterior insular cortex. Such selective tuning for CT-optimal signals in insula may allow recognition of the hedonic relevance of a merely observed caress.

The Social Neuroscience of Empathy

The phenomenon of empathy entails the ability to share the affective experiences of others. In recent years social neuroscience made considerable progress in revealing the mechanisms that enable a person to feel what another is feeling. The present review provides an in-depth and critical discussion of these findings. Consistent evidence shows that sharing the emotions of others is associated with activation in neural structures that are also active during the first-hand experience of that emotion. Part of the neural activation shared between self- and other-related experiences seems to be rather automatically activated. However, recent studies also show that empathy is a highly flexible phenomenon, and that vicarious responses are malleable with respect to a number of factors--such as contextual appraisal, the interpersonal relationship between empathizer and other, or the perspective adopted during observation of the other. Future investigations are needed to provide more detailed insights into these factors and their neural underpinnings. Questions such as whether individual differences in empathy can be explained by stable personality traits, whether we can train ourselves to be more empathic, and how empathy relates to prosocial behavior are of utmost relevance for both science and society.

Physiologically-Indexed and Self-Perceived Affective Empathy in Conduct-Disordered Children High and Low on Callous-Unemotional Traits

Heart rate (HR) was employed to compare vicarious affective arousal across three groups of children (aged 7.6 - 11, N = 95): Conduct Disordered (CD) elevated on Callous-Unemotional traits (CD/CU), CD low on CU traits (CD-only), and [Symbol: see text]typically-developing' controls, matched in age, gender and socioeconomic background. While watching an emotion evocative film, participants' HR was monitored. Immediately after viewing, self-reported vicarious responses were obtained. Participants also completed the Bryant Empathy Index. CD/CU children displayed lower magnitude of HR change than both CD-only and controls. Both CD groups reported fewer vicarious responses and scored lower than controls on the empathy index. These results support distinct deficits across CD subsets, suggestive of distinct mechanisms underlying their antisocial conduct.

Perspective taking is associated with specific facial responses during empathy for pain

Perspective taking is associated with specific facial responses during empathy for pain

Vicarious responses to pain in anterior cingulate cortex: is empathy a multisensory issue?

Results obtained with functional magnetic resonance imaging show that both feeling a moderately painful pinprick stimulus to the fingertips and witnessing another person's hand undergo similar stimulation are associated with common activity in a pain-related area in the right dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Common activity in response to noxious tactile and visual stimulation was restricted to the right inferior Brodmann's area 24b. These results suggest a shared neural substrate for felt and seen pain for aversive ecological events happening to strangers and in the absence of overt symbolic cues. In contrast to ACC 24b, the primary somatosensory cortex showed significant activations in response to both noxious and innocuous tactile, but not visual, stimuli. The different response patterns in the two areas are consistent with the ACC's role in coding the motivational-affective dimension of pain, which is associated with the preparation of behavioral responses to aversive events.

549 Slow potential topographic activities with spatial cognition under speed and power conditions

549 Slow potential topographic activities with spatial cognition under speed and power conditions

An Initial Evaluation of the Comprehensive Quality of Life Scale‐‐Intellectual Disability

This paper introduces a new scale to measure the life quality of people with an intellectual disability. The Comprehensive Quality of Life Scale‐‐Intellectual Disability incorporates features that reflect contemporary understanding of the quality of life construct and exists in a parallel form for the general population. Psychometric data are presented and comparisons are made between data collected from 59 people with an intellectual disability, the vicarious responses of each respondent's primary caregiver, and 69 university students. It is concluded that the scale represents a useful instrument to measure comparative life quality.

Empathy, Sadness, and Distress: Three Related but Distinct Vicarious Affective Responses to Another's Suffering.

A negative state relief explanation for the empathy-helping relationship (e.g., Cialdini et al., 1987) rests on the two-part assumption that empathy, sadness, and distress are (a) related but (b) distinct vicarious affective responses to another's suffering. This assumption received support in two studies from principal components analyses of subjects' self-reported affective responses to situations in which another college student was in need. In Study I subjects reported their response to three different need situations described as having occurred in recent psychology experiments, and in Study 2 subjects reported their response to a current need situation. Oblique rotations of three components extracted from affective responses to each need situation revealed that all components were intercorrelated. Orthogonal rotations, however, yielded component structures suggesting that empathy, sadness, and distress are quantitatively distinct. Correlations between indices of empathy, sadness, and distress further elucidated the relationships between the three affective responses. It is concluded that motivational models of helping and models of vicarious affect should include sadness as a response that is distinct from but related to both empathy and distress.

Identification with film characters, covert aggressive verbalization, and reactions to film violence

Identification with film characters, covert aggressive verbalization, and reactions to film violence