ArticleeLife2021
Neural dynamics between anterior insular cortex and right supramarginal gyrus dissociate genuine affect sharing from perceptual saliency of pretended pain.
Article in eLife, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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
19 citing papers in PubMed, 35 citations in OpenAlex.
- Shared effects of the opioid antagonist naltrexone on first-hand and empathic pain.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2026Trial
- Pain expression and decoding as intergroup phenomena.Affective science · 2026Article
- Harnessing the Neurobiology of Empathy and Compassion to Alleviate Burnout in Neurology.Annals of neurology · 2026Review
- Differential neural activity associated with emotion reactivity and regulation in young adults with non-suicidal self-injury.BJPsych open · 2025Article
- Reducing racial ingroup biases in empathy and altruistic decision-making by shifting racial identification.Science advances · 2025Article
- Unveiling the Truth in Pain: Neural and Behavioral Distinctions Between Genuine and Deceptive Pain.Brain sciences · 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
- Neural network dynamics underlying the bottom-up perception and top-down regulation processes of empathy.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Altered Brain Functional Connectivity and Neurometabolite Correlations in Orofacial Chronic Pain with Central Sensitization.Journal of pain research · 2025Article
- White matter microstructure and functional connectivity in the brains of infants with Turner syndrome.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2024Article
- The impact of acute violent videogame exposure on neurocognitive markers of empathic concern.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2024Article
- Enhancing assessment and intervention for empathy deficits: the "zipper model of empathy" approach in neurodevelopmental disorders.Psychoradiology · 2024Article
- Decoding subject's own name in the primary auditory cortex.Human brain mapping · 2023Article
- Words hurt: common and distinct neural substrates underlying nociceptive and semantic pain.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2023Article
- Whole brain surface-based morphometry and tract-based spatial statistics in migraine with aura patients: difference between pure visual and complex auras.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2023Article
- Stress and the brain: Emotional support mediates the association between myelination in the right supramarginal gyrus and perceived chronic stress.Neurobiology of stress · 2023Article
- Identification of a Glutamatergic Claustrum-Anterior Cingulate Cortex Circuit for Visceral Pain Processing.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2022Article
- Article
- Neural correlates of emotional memory enhancement: The role of valence and arousal.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.)Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Empathy for pain engages both shared affective responses and self-other distinction. In this study, we addressed the highly debated question of whether neural responses previously linked to affect sharing could result from the perception of salient affective displays. Moreover, we investigated how the brain network involved in affect sharing and self-other distinction underpinned our response to a pain that is either perceived as genuine or pretended (while in fact both were acted for reasons of experimental control). We found stronger activations in regions associated with affect sharing (anterior insula [aIns] and anterior mid-cingulate cortex) as well as with affective self-other distinction (right supramarginal gyrus [rSMG]), in participants watching video clips of genuine vs. pretended facial expressions of pain. Using dynamic causal modeling, we then assessed the neural dynamics between the right aIns and rSMG in these two conditions. This revealed a reduced inhibitory effect on the aIns to rSMG connection for genuine pain compared to pretended pain. For genuine pain only, brain-to-behavior regression analyses highlighted a linkage between this inhibitory effect on the one hand, and pain ratings as well as empathic traits on the other. These findings imply that if the pain of others is genuine and thus calls for an appropriate empathic response, neural responses in the aIns indeed seem related to affect sharing and self-other distinction is engaged to avoid empathic over-arousal. In contrast, if others merely pretend to be in pain, the perceptual salience of their painful expression results in neural responses that are down-regulated to avoid inappropriate affect sharing and social support.
Indexed as
Identifiers
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.