ArticleNature communications2019
The neural development of empathy is sensitive to caregiving and early trauma.
Article in Nature communications, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 53 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
53 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 120 citations in OpenAlex.
- Mediators of the Association Between a Parent's Experience of Trauma and Their Children's Well-Being: A Systematic Review.Trauma, violence & abuse · 2026Pooled it
- Inter-brain processes during Live and Represented social moments are inter-related and shaped by behavioral synchrony.Communications psychology · 2026Article
- Empathy and mentalization as mediators between childhood maltreatment and social decision-making during adulthood.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Effects of intergenerational parent-child separation on early eruption of permanent molar and telomere length: a cross-sectional study among Chinese children aged 3-6 years.BMC oral health · 2026Article
- Therapeutic modulation of empathy: pharmacological, neurostimulation, and behavioral approaches.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
- The mediating role of emotional empathy in the relationship between adverse childhood experiences and misophonia: a structural equation modeling.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Dysfunction of the paraventricular thalamus-prelimbic cortex circuit underlies maternal separation-induced deficits in contagious pain.Science advances · 2025Article
- Empathy aligns brains in synchrony.iScience · 2025Article
- Childhood abuse and neglect are differentially related to perceived discrimination and structural change in empathy-related circuitry.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Article
- The Double-Edged Sword Effect of Empathic Concern on Mental Health and Behavioral Outcomes: The Mediating Role of Excessive Adaptation.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Parent-daughter emotional dyssynchrony correlates with personality and psychopathology in adolescents with anorexia nervosa.Eating and weight disorders : EWD · 2025Article
- One in six children and adolescents in south Ethiopia had childhood trauma.BMC psychiatry · 2025Article
- Disruption of Epistemic Trust in Borderline Personality Disorder: A Possible Adaptation to Avoid Making Costly Mistakes.Personality and mental health · 2025Article
- The impact of language context on inter-brain synchrony in bilingual families.Frontiers in cognition · 2025Article
- Rethinking empathy development in childhood and adolescence: a call for global, culturally adaptive strategies.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Sensitive infant care tunes a frontotemporal interbrain network in adolescence.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Behavioral mirroring in Wistar rats investigated through temporal pattern analysis.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Childhood Trauma, Mentalization and Obsessive Compulsive Symptoms in a Non-Clinical Sample: A Mediation Analysis Study.Clinical neuropsychiatry · 2024Article
- Anxious about rejection, avoidant of neglect: Infant marmosets tune their attachment based on individual caregiver's parenting style.Communications biology · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Empathy is a core human social ability shaped by biological dispositions and caregiving experiences; yet the mechanisms sustaining maturation of the neural basis of empathy are unknown. Here, we followed eighty-four children, including 42 exposed to chronic war-related adversity, across the first decade of life, and assessed parenting, child temperament, and anxiety disorders as contributors to the neural development of empathy. At preadolescence, participants underwent magenetoencephalography while observing others' distress. Preadolescents show a widely-distributed response in structures implicating the overlap of affective (automatic) and cognitive (higher-order) empathy, which is predicted by mother-child synchrony across childhood. Only temperamentally reactive young children growing in chronic adversity, particularly those who later develop anxiety disorders, display additional engagement of neural nodes possibly reflecting hyper-mentalizing and ruminations over the distressing stimuli. These findings demonstrate how caregiving patterns fostering interpersonal resonance, reactive temperament, and chronic adversity combine across early development to shape the human empathic brain.
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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.