ReviewBrain topography2019
The Role of Sensorimotor Processes in Pain Empathy.
Review in Brain topography, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 37 papers.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
37 citing papers in PubMed, 70 citations in OpenAlex.
- Shared effects of the opioid antagonist naltrexone on first-hand and empathic pain.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2026Trial
- Trial
- Empathy for pain persists across live two-way video interactions and viewing of prerecorded videos.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Action units of facial expressions in emotional contagion.iScience · 2026Article
- A Qualitative Exploratory Study of Patient Safety and Nurses' Body Awareness Using Motion-Capture-Linked Avatars.Journal of nursing management · 2026Article
- When the body resonates with the pain of the other: Empathy Bodyssence in Parkinson's disease.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2026Article
- Chronic Pain Modulates Empathic Responses in People with Spinal Cord Injury.Journal of clinical medicine · 2025Article
- Baseline Functional Connectivity of the Mesolimbic, Salience, and Sensorimotor Systems Predicts Responses to Psychological Therapies for Chronic Low Back Pain With Comorbid Depression: A Functional MRI Study.Brain and behavior · 2025Article
- How pain and body representations transform each other: A narrative review.Journal of neuropsychology · 2025Review
- Unveiling the Truth in Pain: Neural and Behavioral Distinctions Between Genuine and Deceptive Pain.Brain sciences · 2025Article
- Reduced Modulation of Theta and Beta Oscillations Mediates Empathy Impairment in Parkinson's Disease.Brain and behavior · 2025Article
- The spectrum of embodied intersubjective synchrony in empathy: from fully embodied to externally oriented engagement in Parkinson's disease.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Phenomena of hypo- and hyperconnectivity in basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical circuits linked to major depression: a 7T fMRI study.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Article
- Stress-induced cortisol response predicts empathy for pain: The role of task-based connectivity between the insula and sensorimotor cortex during acute stress.Neurobiology of stress · 2024Article
- Beyond physical sensations: investigating empathy and prosocial behavior in vicarious pain responders.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2024Article
- Empathy bodyssence: temporal dynamics of sensorimotor and physiological responses and the subjective experience in synchrony with the other's suffering.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Posturography Approaches: An Insightful Window to Explore the Role of the Brain in Socio-Affective Processes.Brain sciences · 2023Article
- Sensorimotor processing is dependent on observed speed during the observation of hand-hand and hand-object interactions.Psychological research · 2023Article
- Neural shifts in alpha rhythm's dual functioning during empathy maturation.Brain and behavior · 2023Article
- Are women more empathetic than men? Questionnaire and EEG estimations of sex/gender differences in empathic ability.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Pain is a salient, aversive sensation which motivates avoidance, but also has a strong social signaling function. Numerous studies have shown that regions of the nervous system active in association with first-hand pain are also active in response to the pain of others. When witnessing somatic pain, such as seeing bodies in painful situations, significant activations occur not only in areas related to the processing of negative emotions, but also in neuronal structures engaged in somatosensation and the control of skeletal muscles. These empathy-related sensorimotor activations are selectively reviewed in this article, with a focus on studies using electrophysiological methods and paradigms investigating responses to somatic pain. Convergent evidence from these studies shows that these activations (1) occur at multiple levels of the nervous system, from the spinal cord up to the cerebral cortex, (2) are best conceptualized as activations of a defensive system, in line with the role of pain to protect body from injury, and (3) contribute to establishing a matching of psychological states between the sufferer and the observer, which ultimately supports empathic understanding and motivate prosocial action. Future research should thus focus on how these sensorimotor responses are related to higher-order empathic responses, including affective sharing and emotion regulation, and how this motivates approach-related prosocial behaviors aimed at alleviating the pain and suffering of others.
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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.