ArticleFrontiers in neurology2018
Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Is Critical for Helping Others Who Are Suffering.
Article in Frontiers in neurology, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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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.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Emerging findings of glutamate-glutamine imbalance in the medial prefrontal cortex in attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder: systematic review and meta-analysis of spectroscopy studies.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2022Pooled it
- The role of social norms, empathy, and religiosity in assisted dying decisions: an fMRI study.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Emotional and attentional anomalies underlying triarchic psychopathic traits: an EEG-startle blink study.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- Ventromedial prefrontal neurons represent self-states shaped by vicarious fear in male mice.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Conditional deletion of Neurexin-2 alters neuronal network activity in hippocampal circuitries and leads to spontaneous seizures.Translational psychiatry · 2023Article
- An enriched environment ameliorates the reduction of parvalbumin-positive interneurons in the medial prefrontal cortex caused by maternal separation early in life.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2023Article
- Economic and social values in the brain: evidence from lesions to the human ventromedial prefrontal cortex.Frontiers in neurology · 2023Review
- Can we rewire criminal mind via non-invasive brain stimulation of prefrontal cortex? Insights from clinical, forensic and social cognition studies.Current psychology (New Brunswick, N.J.) · 2022Article
- Decision neuroscience and neuroeconomics: Recent progress and ongoing challenges.Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Cognitive science · 2022Review
- Improving attitudes toward electroconvulsive therapy.BJPsych bulletin · 2022Article
- Brain networks involved in the influence of religion on empathy in male Vietnam War veterans.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Anosognosia for theory of mind deficits: A single case study and a review of the literature.Neuropsychologia · 2020Review
- TEAMwork: Testing Emotional Attunement and Mutuality During Parent-Adolescent fMRI.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2020Article
- Suicidal Ideation in Adolescence: A Perspective View on the Role of the Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Article
- The Neurobehavioral Mechanisms Underlying Attitudes Toward People With Mental or Physical Illness.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2020Article
- Soft on crime: Patients with ventromedial prefrontal cortex damage allocate reduced third-party punishment to violent criminals.Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior · 2019Article
- Impact of Aging on Empathy: Review of Psychological and Neural Mechanisms.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2019Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Neurological patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) are reported to display reduced empathy toward others in their daily lives in clinical case studies. However, the empathic behavior of patients with damage to the vmPFC has not been measured experimentally in response to an empathy-eliciting event. This is important because characterizing the degree to which patients with damage to the vmPFC have lower empathic behavior will allow for the development of targeted interventions to improve patients' social skills and in turn will help family members to better understand their impairments so they can provide appropriate supports. For the first time, we induced empathy using an ecologically-valid empathy induction in neurological patients with damage to the vmPFC and measured their empathic emotional responses and behavior in real time. Eight neurological patients with focal damage to the vmPFC were compared to demographically-matched brain-damaged and healthy comparison participants. Patients with damage to the vmPFC gave less money in the empathy condition to a person who was suffering (a confederate) than comparison participants. This provides the first direct experimental evidence that the vmPFC is critical for empathic behavior toward individuals who are suffering.
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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.