ArticleeLife2018
The causal role of the somatosensory cortex in prosocial behaviour.
Article in eLife, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 48 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
48 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Visual perspective and body ownership modulate vicarious pain and touch: A systematic review.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2024Pooled it
- Testing effects of social rejection on aggressive and prosocial behavior: A meta-analysis.Aggressive behavior · 2022Pooled it
- A Domain-General Developmental "Do-GooD" Network Model of Prosocial Cognition in Adolescence: A Systematic Review.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2022Pooled it
- Empathy for pain persists across live two-way video interactions and viewing of prerecorded videos.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Review
- Neurophysiological mechanisms of embodied empathy in martial arts.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Prosocial Helping Behavior: Conceptual Issues and Neural Mechanisms.Biological psychiatry · 2025Review
- A review on the reporting and assessment of adverse effects associated with high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Review
- Research Progress on Neural Processing of Hand and Forearm Tactile Sensation: A Review Based on fMRI Research.Neuropsychiatric disease and treatment · 2025Review
- Endogenous opioid receptor system mediates costly altruism in the human brain.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Cognitive control: exploring the causal role of the rTPJ in empathy for pain mediated by contextual information.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2024Article
- Neural mechanisms of costly helping in the general population and mirror-pain synesthetes.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Understanding Others' Distress Through Past Experiences: The Role of Memory Engram Cells in Observational Fear.Advances in neurobiology · 2024Review
- What do physicians think about the white coat, about patients' view of the white coat, and how empathetic are physicians toward patients in hospital gowns? An enclothed cognition view.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Neural shifts in alpha rhythm's dual functioning during empathy maturation.Brain and behavior · 2023Article
- Neuro-computational mechanisms and individual biases in action-outcome learning under moral conflict.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Neural, physiological and behavioural correlates of empathy for pain in Tourette syndrome.Brain communications · 2023Article
- Altruistic responses to the most vulnerable involve sensorimotor processes.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Article
- Does the cowl make the monk? The effect of military and Red Cross uniforms on empathy for pain, sense of agency and moral behaviors.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
13 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Witnessing another person's suffering elicits vicarious brain activity in areas that are active when we ourselves are in pain. Whether this activity influences prosocial behavior remains the subject of debate. Here participants witnessed a confederate express pain through a reaction of the swatted hand or through a facial expression, and could decide to reduce that pain by donating money. Participants donate more money on trials in which the confederate expressed more pain. Electroencephalography shows that activity of the somatosensory cortex I (SI) hand region explains variance in donation. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) shows that altering this activity interferes with the pain-donation coupling only when pain is expressed by the hand. High-definition transcranial direct current stimulation (HD-tDCS) shows that altering SI activity also interferes with pain perception. These experiments show that vicarious somatosensory activations contribute to prosocial decision-making and suggest that they do so by helping to transform observed reactions of affected body-parts into accurate perceptions of pain that are necessary for decision-making.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.