ArticleScientific reports2024
Neural mechanisms of costly helping in the general population and mirror-pain synesthetes.
Article in Scientific reports, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Visual perspective and body ownership modulate vicarious pain and touch: A systematic review.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2024Pooled it
- Endogenous opioid receptor system mediates costly altruism in the human brain.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Beyond physical sensations: investigating empathy and prosocial behavior in vicarious pain responders.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
It has been argued that experiencing the pain of others motivates helping. Here, we investigate the contribution of somatic feelings while witnessing the pain of others onto costly helping decisions, by contrasting the choices and brain activity of participants that report feeling somatic feelings (self-reported mirror-pain synesthetes) against those that do not. Participants in fMRI witnessed a confederate receiving pain stimulations whose intensity they could reduce by donating money. The pain intensity could be inferred either from the facial expressions of the confederate in pain (Face condition) or from the kinematics of the pain-receiving hand (Hand condition). Our results show that self-reported mirror-pain synesthetes increase their donation more steeply, as the intensity of the observed pain increases, and their somatosensory brain activity (SII and the adjacent IPL) was more tightly associated with donation in the Hand condition. For all participants, activation in insula, SII, TPJ, pSTS, amygdala and MCC correlated with the trial by trial donation made in the Face condition, while SI and MTG activation was correlated with the donation in the Hand condition. These results further inform us about the role of somatic feelings while witnessing the pain of others in situations of costly helping.
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