The neuroscience of empathy: Progress, pitfalls and promise
Abstract
The last decade has witnessed enormous growth in the neuroscience of empathy. Here, we survey research in this domain with an eye toward evaluating its strengths and weaknesses. First, we take stock of the notable progress made by early research in characterizing the neural systems supporting two empathic sub-processes: sharing others' internal states and explicitly considering those states. Second, we describe methodological and conceptual pitfalls into which this work has sometimes fallen, which can limit its validity. These include the use of relatively artificial stimuli that differ qualitatively from the social cues people typically encounter and a lack of focus on the relationship between brain activity and social behavior. Finally, we describe current research trends that are overcoming these pitfalls through simple but important adjustments in focus, and the future promise of empathy research if these trends continue and expand.
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The dmPFC is implicated in social cognition, mentalizing, monitoring emotional states, and emotion regulation.
“The dmPFC, implicated in social cognition (Bzdok et al., 2013; Lieberman, Straccia, Meyer, Du, & Tan, 2019), mentalizing (Zaki & Ochsner, 2012), and monitoring one’s own and others’ emotional states (Ochsner et al., 2012), is thought to play a role in emotion regulation (Buhle et al., 2014; Ochsner & Gross, 2005).”
From Changes in functional connectivity with cognitive behavioral therapy for social anxiety disorder predict outcomes at follow-up (2020) · cites this paper as Zaki & Ochsner, 2012
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- Authors
- Zaki, J., & Ochsner, K. N.
- Affiliations
- Harvard University (US)
- Columbia University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Zaki, Jamil
- Ochsner, Kevin N
- Venue
- Nature Neuroscience
- Published
- 2012-04-15
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 675-680
- ISSN
- 1097-6256 (ISSN-L)
- 1546-1726
- OpenAlex
- W1995296289
- Semantic Scholar
- 2ee6c971dc47056b52b37d7f34f761de2f526c2f
- Cited by
- 1,231
- References
- 51
- Citations by year
- 2026: 95 · 2025: 107 · 2024: 85 · 2023: 67 · 2022: 89 · 2021: 112 · 2020: 141 · 2019: 111 · 2018: 86 · 2017: 76 · 2016: 81 · 2015: 69 · 2014: 57 · 2013: 43 · 2012: 12
- FWCI
- 87.08
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Update notices
- erratum (2013-11-22)
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Nature Neuroscience (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01DA022541)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Action Observation and Synchronization
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
- Keywords
- empathy, theory of mind, methodological pitfalls, artificial stimuli, brain-behavior relationship, social cognition
- MeSH terms
- Brain, Emotions, Empathy, Humans, Models, Biological, Neurosciences, Social Behavior
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
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