Human empathy through the lens of social neuroscience.

“In a number of studies (see [69], for review), it has been demonstrated that the right TPJ is specifically activated when subjects focusing their attention on a certain screen location are presented with a stimulus at a nonattended location, representing a violation of their expectancy and requiring them to redirect t…”

“Various strategies have been identified to regulate emotions by means of top-down cognitive control[75].”

“Electrophysiological recordings in monkeys as well as neuroimaging experiments in humans have shown that the observation of actions performed by others activates cortical motor representations in the self (see [17] for review).”

“This system includes the insula and medial cingulate cortices[81] and codes the affective and motivational dimensions of pain.”

“Heuristically, these processes have been arranged on a continuum from attentional control to cognitive change[76].”

“Besides, empathy has evolved as an in-group phenomena[9].”

“However, many models of empathy assume an important role of mimicry and emotional contagion and regard these two phenomena as interacting (see Singer and Lamm, 2009, for clarification of terms, and Decety and Lamm, 2006; Preston and de Waal, 2002).”

“Decety and Lamm (2006), for example, proposed a model in which bottom-up (i.e., direct matching between perception and action) and top-down (i.e., regulation, contextual appraisal, and control) information processes are fundamentally intertwined in the generation and modulation of empathy.”

“In particular, this distinction is what separates empathy from emotional contagion (Decety & Lamm, 2006; de Vignemont & Singer, 2006; Gerdes et al., 2010; Scheler, cited in Ickes, 2003).”

“It was thus important to demonstrate both the similarities in the neural networks underlying the sharing of pain with others and the specific mechanisms that permit distinguishing the self from others, which is critical for the experience of empathy (Decety & Hodges, 2006; Decety & Lamm, 2006; Decety, 2005).”

“Both empathy and theory of mind involve an ability to simultaneously distinguish between different possible perspectives on the same situation (Decety and Jackson 2004; Decety and Lamm 2006).”

“2009), at least two different routes to the understanding of other minds can be distinguished: our ability to understand the abstract beliefs and intentions of others, which is referred to as Theory of Mind, cognitive perspective taking or mentalizing (Premack and Woodruff, 1978; Frith and Frith, 2003) and our ability…”

“Accumulating evidence has put forward the view that there are at least two different routes to put us in the shoes (the mind) of the other person [1–6].”

“Recent data from cognitive neuroscience also offer new insights regarding the neural mechanisms and brain areas that underpin empathy (Decety & Jackson, 2004, 2006; Decety & Lamm, 2006; Leiberg & Anders, 2006).”

“The dynamics of this evoked response are consistent with the two-stage model of empathy for pain, as evidenced by clear demarcations in the time course, scalp distribution, and functional in aspects of time course, scalp distribution, and functional significance (Decety, 2007; Decety and Lamm, 2006; Decety and Meyer,…”

“Theoretically and conceptually, empathy has seen much attention in the philosophical, psychological, and more recently, cognitive neuroscience literature, with varying definitions and conceptualizations (Decety & Lamm, 2006).”

“However, subcortical systems do not lose their basic function, they may give up some of their autonomy in terms of the degree to which higher cortical systems can modulate their functions or regulate the emotional experience (adapted from [168–170]).”

“How we might do so requires consideration of the cognitive components of empathy, which may be said to be unique to humans and other primates (Decety & Lamm 2006, de Waal 2008).”

“We further predicted an enhanced self-other distinction in the expert group, represented neurally as additional activation of the right temporoparietal junction, an area known to play a crucial role in self-other distinction processes and theory of mind [2, 4].”

“aspects of empathy (Decety and Lamm 2006).”

“, 2016) and share emotions is automatic mimicry (Decety and Lamm, 2006; Schuler et al., 2016; Singer and Lamm, 2009).”

“…emotional and sensory experience of other individuals. n addition, appropriate social communications and behaviours eed vicarious experiencing of emotions congruent with those of thers while being aware of the distinction between the self and thers (Decety & Jackson, 2004; Decety & Lamm, 2006).”

“, [12,13,45]) emphasize the contribution of both automatic and controlled processes to the conscious experience of empathy.”

“Nevertheless, this result is consistent with developmental and neurological research findings that have suggested individuals must reach a certain level of neurological maturity before they can adequately understand and display empathy (Choudhury et al., 2006; Decety & Lamm, 2006).”

“It has previously been argued that forming such a cognitive representation is likely to serve to reduce empathic personal distress (Decety and Lamm, 2006), and therefore one might predict that not only would self-reported personal distress scores be higher than in typical controls, but also that…”

“…as a process of knowing is influenced by prior experiential knowledge of factors shaping the observation condition, previous interaction(s) with the target, and/ or exposure to texts, worlds, or spaces that in some way shape how the target is experiencing a circumstance (Decety & Lamm, 2006).”

“Emotional disconnection is considered to be a top-down process that has a regulatory function, in particular in terms of the inhibitory control exercised by the prefrontal and the cingulate cortex (Decety & Lamm, 2006; Singer & Lamm, 2009).”

“With respect to cognitive empathy, various functional neuroimaging studies have shown involvement of frontal brain areas in perspective taking, ToM, and empathic accuracy (Decety and Lamm, 2006; Frith and Frith, 2006; Gallese et al., 2004; Singer, 2006; Zaki et al., 2009).”

“As a two-component model distinguishing cognitive and affective aspects of empathy is proposed in the literature (e.g., Decety & Lamm, 2006), we ran a two-factor model in which fantasy items and perspective-taking items were assumed to measure the cognitive empathy factor, and personal distress…”

“, 2003) support the notion of a central involvement of anterior insular cortex in empathy (for overviews, see de Vignemont and Singer, 2006; Decety and Lamm, 2006; Gallese et al., 2004).”

“empathy, cultural differences, prosocial behavior, collectivism, personality, emotion Empathy is defined as the tendency to be psychologically in tune with others’ feelings and perspectives (Decety & Lamm, 2006).”

“Sharing the patient’s emotions (sympathy) can lead to empathic overarousal or personal distress (an aversive self-focused emotional reaction to the apprehension of another person’s emotional state) [22].”

“…model of empathy that involves a complex interaction between bottom–up (i.e., direct matching between perception and action) and top–down (i.e., regulation and control) information processes (Lamm, Porges, Cacioppo, & Decety, 2008; Decety & Lamm, 2006; Goubert et al., 2005; Decety & Jackson, 2004).”

“Here, we consider empathy as a construct accounting for a sense of similarity in feelings experienced by the self and the other, without confusion between the two individuals (Decety & Jackson, 2004; Decety & Lamm, 2006).”

“Empathy, the ability to experience and understand what other people feel without confusion between self and others, plays a fundamental role in social interaction and moral development (Decety and Jackson, 2004; Decety and Lamm, 2006; Decety and Moriguchi, 2007; Hodges and Wegner, 1997).”

“…links in our brains enable us to understand other peoples motor action has been expanded to include the ability to share not only motor actions but also feelings and sensations with others (Preston & de Waal 2002; Gallese 2003; Decety & Jackson 2004; Decety & Lamm 2006; de Vignemont & Singer 2006).”

“Theoretical conceptualizations of empathy (Decety & Jackson, 2004; Decety & Lamm, 2006; de Vignemont & Singer, 2006; Gallese, 2003; Preston & de Waal, 2002) suggest that we understand other people’s affective states via activation of neural networks usually involved in processing our own affective states.”

“…neuroscientists have argued for a definition that requires at least a partial, isomorphic sharing of the feeling(s) of another person to be classified as empathy (e.g. Bernhardt and Singer, 2012; Decety and Lamm, 2006; Decety et al., 2012; Gonzalez-Liencres et al., 2013; Singer and Lamm, 2009).”

“The brain can distinguish at the cortical level whether the self or another individual is experiencing an emotion or pain or peripheral arousal; yet, at some core level, it is difficult to distinguish personal from socially relevant cues (Decety & Lamm, 2006).”

“Based on a model of empathy for pain consisting of early emotional sharing and late cognitive evaluation (Decety and Lamm, 2006; De Vignemont and Singer, 2006; Fan and Han, in press; Preston and de Waal, 2002), the ERP results reported in this paper indicate that the early neural activity…”

“Without self-regulation, information processing would lose flexibility and would become primarily bound to external stimulations” (Decety & Lamm, 2006, p. 1160).”

“appraisal, and mechanisms of control (Decety and Sommerville, 2003; Decety and Jackson, 2004; Decety and Lamm, 2006).”

“…since there is strong empirical evidence that individuals tend to be empathic toward others’ pain, suffering, and distress (Decety & Jackson, 2006; Decety & Lamm, 2006; Preston & de Waal, 2002); (2) the perceived verisimilitude of the message, since it is a precedent of state empathy (Campbell…”

“A growing body of empirical neuroscientific evidence suggests that perception and/or empathy for pain is not an all-or-none phenomenon but it is strongly influenced by interpersonal, intrapersonal and situational factors (Decety and Jackson, 2004; Decety and Lamm, 2006).”

“The evaluation of another person's emotion can be achieved in more than one way, i.e. via autonomic perception ( " emotional empathy " ), and/or intellectual reasoning of the other's mental state ( " cognitive empathy " ; Decety & Lamm, 2006; Preston & de Waal, 2002; Davis, 1983).”

“On the contrary, they are sophisticated cognitive skills and as such can be learned, increased, perhaps even “mastered” (Decety & Lamm, 2006).”

“While this conclusion may seem trivial, it actually brakes new grounds in the context of empathy research: most current models of empathy for pain or distress in human neuroscience used prerecorded stimuli [2,4,9,10,11,72,73,74] or used live interactions but prevented participants from viewing the reactions of their p…”

“, the affective link between the empath and the person in pain) processes shape the cognitive, affective and behavioral responses accompanying this phenomenon (Goubert et al., 2005; Decety and Lamm, 2006).”

“The observing person catches and shares the pleasant affect, while still knowing that the original source of the affect lies in the other person and not within the self (Decety & Jackson, 2004; Decety & Lamm, 2006), that is, positive empathy is triggered (Sallquist et al., 2009).”

“For instance, empathy does not only require individuals to share others’ emotional state but also to control these emotions to provide a complementary empathic response (Bird & Viding, 2014; Decety & Lamm, 2006).”

“Such processes are characteristic of nonconscious mimicry of facial expressions, posture, gestures, and mannerisms observed in self and others when we interact with them.”

“For example, the anterior insula appears to activate more so with vicarious experiences of pain (Jackson et al., 2006), while for first-hand experiences of pain the posterior insula is implemented (Decety & Lamm, 2006).”

“Decety and colleagues (Decety & Jackson, 2004; Decety & Lamm, 2006; Decety & Moriguchi, 2007) combined cumulative, qualitative descriptions of empathy from the social sciences with the new findings in social cognitive neuroscience, which led to a conceptualization of empathy as the dynamic…”

“…in its “functional architecture” which encompasses several major components – affect sharing, self-other awareness, regulatory processes, and mental flexibility to adopt the subjective perspective of another, with constant interplay between these mechanisms (Decety & Lamm, 2006; Decety, 2007).”

“…states; second, cognitive empathy requires more conscious deliberation, enables understanding of people's emotions and putting these into perspective, and may support strategic social interactions and communication (Decety & Jackson, 2004; Decety & Lamm, 2006; Hakansson & Montgomery, 2003).”

“…suggest that the flow of information from the shared representational system is not unidimensional, but rather that the aFMC may control shared representations, by enhancing or inhibiting the automatically evoked activations of this system [see also Decety and Lamm, 2006; Olsson and Ochsner, 2008].”

“According to their definition, affective representations in the brain are automatically activated by perceptual input, whereas cognitive control is mediated by cortical structures, mainly the prefrontal cortex (Decety and Lamm, 2006).”

“These findings support the two-level (early bottom-up and late top-down processing) theory of Decety and Lamm (2006)3.”

“Empathy is generally considered to be the ability to experience and understand what others feel [10].”

“This sharing stems from the perception–action coupling (supported by the MNS), which automatically induces the observer to resonate with the emotional state of another individual, with the observer emulating the motor representations and associated automatic and somatic responses that stem from the observed target [22…”

“In any case, it is clear that observing—or even merely anticipating—someone else in pain elicits an empathic response (Decety and Lamm, 2006; Bernhardt and Singer, 2012; Lamm et al., 2017).”

“These results were consistent across three independent analyses aimed at testing the same hypothesis and shed new light on the existence and nature of shared neural representations of affective states (Decety and Lamm, 2006; Singer and Lamm, 2009).”

“The present study supports theoretical concepts defining empathy as a complex interplay of bottom-up and top-down processes (e.g., Decety and Lamm, 2006; Goubert et al., 2005).”

“Obviously, this is a complex social phenomenon that, until recently, has received much attention from philosophers and psychologists rather than neuroscientists (Decety and Lamm 2006).”

“…one contrasts internally represented imitated states with the perceived emotional state of another while keeping a separation of the self from the other person; this allows for an overall assessment of imitated and perceived emotional states (Decety and Lamm, 2006; Preston and de Waal, 2002).”

“Decety and Lamm (2006) pointed out that distractive strategies may be important for humans if the cost of empathizing is excessive.”

“For example, Decety and Lamm (2006) proposed that empathy involves both emotion sharing (bottom-up information processing) and executive control, which modulates the shared affective experience (top-down information processing).”

“Most recently, the insula has also been associated with different aspects of the self [5,6,16], reward [14,15] and empathy [66].”

“Decety and Lamm (2006) claim that altruistic empathy is a striking quality that runs contrary to the Darwinian tradition of natural selection, and is evident in life beyond humanity.”

“…recognition (perception) and affective empathy (feeling and action) is also supported by both psychophysiological and cognitive neuroscience research, which has suggested that the link stems from an automatic perception–action mechanism leading to emotional contagion (Decety and Lamm, 2006).”

“Although several of the advice PE (e2) activations reported in this paper have previously been associated with ‘theory of mind’ processes (Decety and Lamm, 2006; Lamm et al., 2009; Carrington and Bailey, 2009; Chang et al., 2011; Frith and Frith, 2012), these activations may not be specific to social learning tasks.”

“…M anuscript A uthor M anuscript Empathy, the ability to understand and experience what others feel without confusion between oneself and others (Decety & Lamm, 2006), is a multidimensional construct encompassing (1) a cognitive component, the ability to understand another’s perspective and…”

“Without self–other distinction and the regulation of emotions, an affective response to another person’s emotional state could be aversive causing distress or excessive emotional stimulation in the observer: this is particularly important in the context of modern life where we may experience the emotional states of ot…”

“This is likely related to the mirror neuron system (Gallese, 2004; Rizzolatti, 2005, Singer & Lamm) and occurs in a bottom-up, automatic way (Decety & Lamm, 2006; Singer & Lamm).”

“…suggest dissociable roles of dorsal anterior cingulate and anterior insula in empathic processing, though this has not yet been demonstrated (only anterior–posterior distinctions within each region representing observed and experienced pain, respectively; see Decety and Lamm, 2006, for a review).”