The DOI matches its Crossref record; 86 of the 88 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
How do we empathize with someone who is not like us? A functional magnetic resonance imaging study.
Open accessAbstract
Previous research on the neural underpinnings of empathy has been limited to affective situations experienced in a similar way by an observer and a target individual. In daily life we also interact with people whose responses to affective stimuli can be very different from our own. How do we understand the affective states of these individuals? We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess how participants empathize with the feelings of patients who reacted with no pain to surgical procedures but with pain to a soft touch. Empathy for pain of these patients activated the same areas (insula, medial/anterior cingulate cortex) as empathy for persons who responded to painful stimuli in the same way as the observer. Empathy in a situation that was aversive only for the observer but neutral for the patient recruited areas involved in self-other distinction (dorsomedial prefrontal cortex) and cognitive control (right inferior frontal cortex). In addition, effective connectivity between the latter and areas implicated in affective processing was enhanced. This suggests that inferring the affective state of someone who is not like us can rely upon the same neural structures as empathy for someone who is similar to us. When strong emotional response tendencies exist though, these tendencies have to be overcome by executive functions. Our results demonstrate that the fronto-cortical attention network is crucially involved in this process, corroborating that empathy is a flexible phenomenon which involves both automatic and controlled cognitive mechanisms. Our findings have important implications for the understanding and promotion of empathy, demonstrating that regulation of one's egocentric perspective is crucial for understanding others.
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“The anterior insula could be activated both in interoceptive awareness (Cui et al., 2020) and emotion perception task (Lamm et al., 2010) including pain perception (Farb et al., 2013).”
From Enhanced Resting-State Functional Connectivity With Decreased Amplitude of Low-Frequency Fluctuations of the Salience Network in Mindfulness Novices (2022) · cites this paper as Lamm et al., 2010
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Cites
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Control of goal-directed and stimulus-driven attention in the brain
Corbetta, M., & Shulman, G. L. (2002) · Nature Reviews Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nrn755 · Cited by 12,881
Conflict monitoring and cognitive control
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How do you feel? Interoception: The sense of the physiological condition of the body
Craig, A. D. (2002) · Nature Reviews Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nrn894 · Cited by 6,006
Empathy: its ultimate and proximate bases
Preston, S. D., & de Waal, F. B. M. (2002) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x02000018 · Cited by 4,126
Baron-Cohen, S., & Wheelwright, S. (2004) · Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders · doi:10.1023/b:jadd.0000022607.19833.00 · Cited by 4,093
A new SPM toolbox for combining probabilistic cytoarchitectonic maps and functional imaging data
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Empathy for Pain Involves the Affective but not Sensory Components of Pain
Singer, T., Seymour, B., O'Doherty, J., Kaube, H., Dolan, R. J., & Frith, C. D. (2004) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1093535 · Cited by 3,929
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Meeting of minds: the medial frontal cortex and social cognition
Amodio, D. M., & Frith, C. D. (2006) · Nature Reviews Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nrn1884 · Cited by 3,782 · cited 2×
“Recent reviews (van Overwalle, in press ; Amodio & Frith, 2006 ) suggest that ventral aspects of mPFC are primarily associated with thinking about others based upon one's own mental representations, whereas dorsal regions are involved in taking the perspective of others—in particular when they are dissimilar from the…”
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Research works printed but not linked: 2
- Decety, 2005, Perspective taking as the royal avenue to empathy., 135
- Hodges, 1997, The mental control of empathic accuracy., 311
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Lamm, C., Decety, J., & Singer, T. (2011) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.10.014 · Cited by 2,016
Self-citationThe social neuroscience of empathy
Singer, T., & Lamm, C. (2009) · Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04418.x · Cited by 1,981
Self-citationSomatosensation in social perception
Keysers, C., Kaas, J. H., & Gazzola, V. (2010) · Nature Reviews Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nrn2833 · Cited by 787
Anterior insular cortex and emotional awareness
Gu, X., Hof, P. R., Friston, K. J., & Fan, J. (2013) · Journal of Comparative Neurology · doi:10.1002/cne.23368 · Cited by 712
“…2012), cognitive control (Eckert et al., 2009; Menon and Uddin, 2010), empathy (Singer et al., 2004; Gu and Han, 2007a; Gu et al., 2010, 2012, 2013; Lamm et al., 2010; Ebisch et al., 2011), intuition (Kuo et al., 2009), unfairness (Sanfey et al., 2003; Kirk et al., 2011), risk and uncertainty…”
Foundations for a new science of learning
Meltzoff, A. N., Kuhl, P. K., Movellan, J., & Sejnowski, T. J. (2009) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1175626 · Cited by 723
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Metadata
- Authors
- Lamm, C., Meltzoff, A. N., & Decety, J.
- Affiliations
- University of Chicago (US)
- University of Washington (US)
- 1The University of Chicago
- Venue
- Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
- Publisher
- MIT Press - Journals
- Published
- 2010-02-01
- Volume
- 22
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 362-376
- ISSN
- 0898-929X (ISSN-L)
- 1530-8898
- OpenAlex
- W2120445824
- Cited by
- 278
- References
- 88
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 26 · 2022: 12 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 11 · 2019: 8 · 2018: 35 · 2017: 9 · 2016: 15 · 2015: 20 · 2014: 19 · 2013: 25 · 2012: 18
- FWCI
- 29.17
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.zora.uzh.ch
- Licence
- other-oa
- Locations
- Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich) (acceptedVersion, other-oa)
- Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Action Observation and Synchronization
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Empathy and Medical Education
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Keywords
- empathy, empathy for pain, emotional understanding, self-other distinction, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, inferior frontal cortex, cognitive control, executive function, insula, anterior cingulate cortex, effective connectivity, interoception, egocentric perspective, neural basis of empathy
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Affect, Afferent Pathways, Brain Mapping, Cerebral Cortex, Color Perception, Empathy, Eye Movements, Female, Humans, Image Processing, Computer-Assisted, Functional Laterality, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Oxygen, Pain, Pain Measurement, Pattern Recognition, Visual, Photic Stimulation, Reaction Time, Young Adult
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