ArticleCNS neuroscience & therapeutics2021
The effect of somatosensory alpha transcranial alternating current stimulation on pain empathy is trait empathy and gender dependent.
Article in CNS neuroscience & therapeutics, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Transcranial direct current stimulation for migraine: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.CNS neuroscience & therapeutics · 2022Pooled it
- A transdisciplinary framework for empathy research.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Article
- Sex differences in the effects of 10 Hz and 40 Hz transcranial alternating current stimulation on spatial cognition in mice.Biology of sex differences · 2025Article
- The influence of social pain experience on empathic neural responses: the moderating role of gender.Experimental brain research · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundPain empathy enables a person to experience and understand other's pain state by observing others in pain condition. Such prosocial ability is deficient in many psychopathological disorders. Somatosensory alpha suppression is considered as neural correlates of pain empathy and is hypothesized as a target for enhancement of pain empathy. Researches demonstrated that alpha suppression could be enhanced by transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) at alpha frequency non-invasively.
aimsWe applied alpha tACS over the primary somatosensory cortex of healthy subjects to investigate whether alpha tACS is able to enhance the pain empathy performance.
resultsThe results showed that there was no difference of pain empathy performance between alpha tACS and sham tACS either when tACS was applied during the task or before task. While in the alpha tACS group, the pain empathy performance was positively correlated with empathic concern of male subjects, the sub-component of personal trait empathy.
conclusionsAlpha tACS cannot alter the empathy performance overall, but the modulation effect of alpha tACS on pain empathy is dependent on the gender and trait empathy of subjects.
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Registered trials
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