Neural correlates of empathy and emotion Flashcards
What is empathy?
It is complicated:
Emotional vs Cognitive
Reactive vs Parallel
Direct vs Non-Direct
Emotional, reactive, direct= Emotional contagion-reflection
Cognitive, Parallel, Non-Direct = Awareness, non-congruent emotions
What are the most widely used empathy distinctions?
Cognitive- understantding someones mental state
Affective-Emotional contagion
Personal Distress-A self orientated emotional response to another emotional state
What is the relationship between Personal Distress and empathy
They are negatively correlated
What is the relationship between compassion and empathy in the west?
Preston and Hofelch:
Sometimes synonymous,
Involved in true empathy
Affective empathy, but without the contagion and feeling sorry for while staying separate.
How does Buddhism refer to compassion?
Loose translation of “nying Je”,
Compassion without the pity, instead, all about connection.
4 steps:
Acknowledging the suffering of ourselves and others
Suffering is universal
Accepting it
Taking responsive not reactive action
What are the main differences between referential and non-referential compassion in Buddhism?
Referential occurs only with regards to another and there closeness to them.
Non-referetial is unchangeable, general love and care for everyone regardless of closeness. Can be cruel.
Constructivist and innastist schools see compassion is what ways?
Complimentary, but separate approaches to insight and Samatha.
Love and kindness can be trained in different ways.
Innastist schools see it as a result of stage 4 of mindfulness,
For Dzogen and Muhudra - can practice it on the way to Non-dulaity.
For Zen- you cannot practice
What is the most common approach to compassion in Theravada schools?
Love and Kindness, or Metta.
Toward self and all the way to others.
What impact does MBCT and MBSR compassion training have?
Improvements in clinical symptoms.
Who pioneered the research into empathy and neuroscience?
Tara Signer
What was the general understanding of empathy fro pain before Singer et al’s study?
That empathy for pain was generated from areas associated with sensory feeling of pain and the affective reaction of pain.
What was the design of Singer et al’s study?
16 couples put through a fMRI to see reaction to pain in own hand vs others hand
What did Singer et al find?
Pain in oneself is unique to Somatosensory and Posterior insula.
Empathetic pain is associated with affective areas, anterior insula, and not somatosensory areas.
What did Lamm et al’s meta analysis find with regards to pain and empathy?
Similar to Singer they found anterior insula, rostral anterior and cingulate cortex were activated when empathic pain is felt
What did Cheng et al find regarding empathy?
They found images of pain when applied to self, loved ones, and stranger activated SMA and ACC in differing strengths. Self and Loved one being the strongest.
The affective empathy response only arises with those we see as the same or close to us. Those outside the group will receive cognitive empathy at best.
We know this as the rTPJ is involved in ToM.
Who is Matthieu Richard
He was the son of a French philosopher and a successful biochemist. I then became a monk and now continues his interest in science by taking part in fMRI scans
What was the disagreement between Richard and Singer?
Tania Singer showed the findings of “affective and not sensory empathy” study and concluded that there was a hierarchy of emotional contagion, empathy and compassion.
Richard argued that true compassion is separate to the pain and affective empathy or emotional distress.
What did Singer find with regards to Richard’s fMRI?
Thats the usual areas of brain activity were activated by emotional distress- Anterior insula/ interceptive cortex
When he generated compassion the reward areas lit up VTA, substantial nigra, globes plaids and striatum.
What theoretical framework was developed following the surprising findings of Singer’s study on Richard?
That empathy can follow two distinct routes.
Compassion- pro-social behaviour, other related emotion, positive feelings
Personal Distress: withdraw , negative emotions, self-related emotions
What did the Klimecki study find?
Subjects were trained in either compassion or memory training.
Then show high and low emotional videos and reported positive or negative feelings.
Compassion training was able to increase positive affect and empathy in low emotional videos.
What did Klimecki’s follow up study show?
In this study training was divided into empathy and compassion vs memory training.
In empathy training they were asked to think of themselves in difficult scenarios and then close people in suffering, as well as strangers and all people.
Compassion training: Past suffering was asked to met with care via mantras, again then extended to others.
Empathy ratings were higher after empathy training, but only compassion training was capable of increasing positive affect.
Empathy training activated bi-lateral anterior insula and ACC,
Compassion activated pleasure OFC, Ventral striatum, and pleasure areas
How do the neural correlates match up with Singers theoretical framework of empathy and compassion?
Compassion: OFC, Ventral striatum, VTA/ SN
Empathy: ACC, and Anterior Insula
