ArticleHuman brain mapping2020
Linking brain structure and activation in anterior insula cortex to explain the trait empathy for pain.
Article in Human brain mapping, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers.
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Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed, 49 citations in OpenAlex.
- Decoupling of amygdala-salience circuit associated with negative symptoms in adolescents with early-onset schizophrenia.Psychiatry and clinical neurosciences · 2026Article
- A causal and dissociable role for the right inferior frontal gyrus in empathy for physical and social pain.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Altered functional connectivity of emotional circuits and default mode network in postpartum women: a resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging study.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- Brain Activation Features in Response to the Expectation of Receiving Rewards Through Aggression.Brain sciences · 2025Article
- A neurofunctional signature of affective arousal generalizes across valence domains and distinguishes subjective experience from autonomic reactivity.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Unmasking the Dark Triad: A Data Fusion Machine Learning Approach to Characterize the Neural Bases of Narcissistic, Machiavellian and Psychopathic Traits.The European journal of neuroscience · 2025Article
- Kindergarten teachers' compassion fatigue: decreasing with empathic ability or empathic motivation or both?Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- The neurostructural bases of empathy: morphometric evidence for a multicomponential approach.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- Association of empathy with clinical symptoms and cognitive function in chronic schizophrenia patients with and without suicide attempts.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2024Article
- Neural signatures of imaginary motivational states: desire for music, movement and social play.Brain topography · 2024Article
- Altered empathy processing in frontotemporal dementia A task-based fMRI study.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Pain suffering and the self. An active allostatic inference explanation.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2024Article
- Sex difference in trait empathy is encoded in the human anterior insula.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2023Article
- Oxytocin-Receptor Gene Modulates Reward-Network Connection and Relationship with Empathy Performance.Psychology research and behavior management · 2023Article
- To respond or not to respond: exploring empathy-related psychological and structural brain differences between placebo analgesia responders and non-responders.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Empathy for others versus for one's child: Associations with mothers' brain activation during a social cognitive task and with their toddlers' functioning.Developmental psychobiology · 2022Article
- Middle cingulate cortex function contributes to response to non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug in cervical spondylosis patients: a preliminary resting-state fMRI study.Neuroradiology · 2022Article
- The Current View on the Paradox of Pain in Autism Spectrum Disorders.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Review
- Increased activation in the bilateral anterior insulae in response to others in pain in mothers compared to non-mothers.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Disrupted Association Between Empathy and Brain Structure in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.Soa--ch'ongsonyon chongsin uihak = Journal of child & adolescent psychiatry · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The ability to perceive, understand, and react to the feelings of others' pain is referred to as empathy for pain which is composed of two components, affective-perceptual empathy and cognitive-evaluative empathy. Recent reviews on the neural mechanisms of empathetic pain showed the anterior insula (AI) cortex as a core circuit for empathy. However, little is known about the modulation of brain anatomy and empathic responses by trait measures of empathy (trait empathy). Thus, we investigated whether individual variation in the personality trait of empathy is associated with individual variation in the structure of specific brain regions using voxel-based morphometry (VBM). We further investigated the relationship between the trait empathy and the activity of the same regions using state measures of empathy for pain in a trial-by-trial fashion in the given situation. VBM analysis indicated a small but significant negative relationship between trait empathy and gray matter volume in the bilateral AI. Functional MRI study further demonstrated that experimentally induced activity of the bilateral AI during state empathy for pain was also correlated with trait empathy. An asymmetry exists between the right and left AI between the affective and cognitive empathy. The right AI was found to be involved in the affective-perceptual form of empathy and the left AI was active in cognitive-evaluative forms of empathy. The interindividual differences in trait empathy may be reflected both in the state empathy and more stable brain structure difference.
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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.