SynthesisSocial cognitive and affective neuroscience2019
A meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies on pain empathy: investigating the role of visual information and observers' perspective.
Synthesis in Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT07432841 (Innovative Neuromodulation Treatments for Chronic Pain), which is not on this map. Cited by 57 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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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.
Innovative Neuromodulation Treatments for Chronic Pain: Assessing and Predicting the Effects of Personalized High-Definition Protocols for Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (HD-tDCS)
Who cites it
57 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Brain functional changes following spinal manipulation therapy in patients with lumbar disc herniation and chronic low back pain: a scoping review.Frontiers in neurology · 2025Pooled it
- Human lesions and animal studies link the claustrum to perception, salience, sleep and pain.Brain : a journal of neurology · 2022Pooled it
- A feature-based network analysis and fMRI meta-analysis reveal three distinct types of prosocial decisions.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2021Pooled it
- Shared and distinct functional networks for empathy and pain processing: a systematic review and meta-analysis of fMRI studies.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2020Pooled it
- Tuina Alleviates Pain Associated with Lumbar Disc Herniation by Regulating Functional Connectivity Between Inferior Frontal Triangularis and Multiple Brain Networks: A Randomized Controlled fMRI Study.Journal of pain research · 2026Trial
- Resolving temporal threat uncertainty by observational learning involves the amygdala, hippocampus and anterior insula.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
- Empathy for pain persists across live two-way video interactions and viewing of prerecorded videos.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Mindful minds: How group identity shapes brain and behavior in social decision-making.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Individual differences in the empathic experience of pain: An EEG and machine learning approach.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Neural effects of cathodal transcranial direct current stimulation over left supramarginal gyrus on cognitive empathy for pain.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Action units of facial expressions in emotional contagion.iScience · 2026Article
- Empathy for pain in humans and animals differs based on species, psychosocial and cultural factors.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Resting-state functional connectivity related to empathy and sensory processing sensitivity.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Article
- Neural Tracking of Race-Related Information During Face Perception.Neuroscience bulletin · 2025Article
- The possible effect of inflammation on non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents with depression: a mediator of connectivity within corticostriatal reward circuitry.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2025Article
- Target Weight and Gender Moderate Anti-Black Bias in Pain Perception.Social psychological and personality science · 2025Article
- Machine learning classification of active viewing of pain and non-pain images using EEG does not exceed chance in external validation samples.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2025Article
- Reducing racial ingroup biases in empathy and altruistic decision-making by shifting racial identification.Science advances · 2025Article
- Impact of Spinal Manipulative Therapy on Brain Function and Pain Alleviation in Lumbar Disc Herniation: A Resting-State fMRI Study.Chinese journal of integrative medicine · 2025Article
- Parietofrontal Networks Mediate Contextual Influences in the Appraisal of Pain and Disgust Facial Expressions.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Empathy relies on brain systems that support the interaction between an observer's mental state and cues about the others' experience. Beyond the core brain areas typically activated in pain empathy studies (insular and anterior cingulate cortices), the diversity of paradigms used may reveal secondary networks that subserve other more specific processes. A coordinate-based meta-analysis of fMRI experiments on pain empathy was conducted to obtain activation likelihood estimates along three factors and seven conditions: visual cues (body parts, facial expressions), visuospatial (first-person, thirdperson), and cognitive (self-, stimuli-, other-oriented tasks) perspectives. The core network was found across cues and perspectives, and common activation was observed in higher-order visual areas. Body-parts distinctly activated areas related with sensorimotor processing (superior and inferior parietal lobules, anterior insula) while facial expression distinctly involved the inferior frontal gyrus. Self- compared to other-perspective produced distinct activations in the left insula while stimulus- versus other-perspective produced distinctive responses in the inferior frontal and parietal lobules, precentral gyrus, and cerebellum. Pain empathy relies on a core network which is modulated by several secondary networks. The involvement of the latter seems to depend on the visual cues available and the observer's mental state that can be influenced by specific instructions.
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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.