Hearing others' pain: neural activity related to empathy
Hearing others' pain: neural activity related to empathy
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DOI：
10.3758/s13415-011-0035-0
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发表时间：
2011-09-01
影响因子：
2.9
通讯作者：
Kotchoubey, Boris
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Lang, Simone;Yu, Tao;Kotchoubey, Boris
人的声音是社会和情感交流的主要载体之一。最近的神经影像学研究表明，观察他人的疼痛会激活类似于疼痛第一手经验的神经表征；然而，对听觉通道中疼痛表达的研究尚缺乏。我们进行了一项功能性磁共振成像研究，以检查大脑对他人痛苦的情绪感叹的反应。控制条件包括积极（如笑）或消极（如打鼾）的人类声音刺激，这些刺激与疼痛和痛苦无关。与对照刺激相比，疼痛相关的惊呼引起颞上回和中颞回、左岛、次级体感皮层、丘脑和右小脑的激活增加，同时前扣带皮层失活。左前叶和丘脑的激活与人际反应指数的共情关注分量表显著相关。因此，参与倾听他人痛苦的大脑区域与那些在视觉刺激的移情处理中被激活的区域相似。此外，研究结果强调了个体间差异对情感共情的调节作用。
The human voice is one of the principal conveyers of social and affective communication. Recent neuroimaging studies have suggested that observing pain in others activates neural representations similar to those from the first-hand experience of pain; however, studies on pain expressions in the auditory channel are lacking. We conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging study to examine brain responses to emotional exclamations of others' pain. The control condition comprised positive (e.g., laughing) or negative (e.g., snoring) stimuli of the human voice that were not associated with pain and suffering. Compared to these control stimuli, pain-related exclamations elicited increased activation in the superior and middle temporal gyri, left insula, secondary somatosensory cortices, thalamus, and right cerebellum, as well as deactivation in the anterior cingulate cortex. The left anterior insular and thalamic activations correlated significantly with the Empathic Concern subscale of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index. Thus, the brain regions involved in hearing others' pain are similar to those activated in the empathic processing of visual stimuli. Additionally, the findings emphasise the modulating role of interindividual differences in affective empathy.