Empathic brain responses in insula are modulated by levels of alexithymia but not autism.
Empathic brain responses in insula are modulated by levels of alexithymia but not autism.
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DOI：
10.1093/brain/awq060
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发表时间：
2010-05
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Singer T
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Bird G;Silani G;Brindley R;White S;Frith U;Singer T
患有自闭症谱系疾病（以下简称“自闭症”）的个体存在社会认知困难，这是众所周知的。在这里，我们关注社会认知的一个重要方面：同情他人感受的能力。与心智理论相比，自闭症患者的一种能力经常被观察到受损，而人们对自闭症患者情感分享的能力知之甚少。根据先前的数据表明，自闭症患者的共情缺陷是与述情障碍相关的内感受缺陷的一个功能，我们旨在研究具有高和低度述情障碍的自闭症和对照参与者的共情大脑反应。使用功能性磁共振成像，我们用“对疼痛的同理心”范式测量了同理心大脑反应，评估了现实生活中不依赖于对面部情感线索的关注或识别的社交环境中的同理心大脑反应。证实了之前的发现，大脑对他人痛苦的共情反应与左前岛叶激活增加有关，并且该信号的强度可以预测自闭症组和对照组的述情障碍程度，但不随群体的变化而变化。重要的是，在考虑述情障碍后，自闭症组和对照组之间的同理心程度没有差异。这些发现表明，在自闭症中观察到的共情缺陷可能是由于述情障碍和自闭症之间存在巨大的共病，而不是自闭症社交障碍的必要特征。
Difficulties in social cognition are well recognized in individuals with autism spectrum conditions (henceforth ‘autism’). Here we focus on one crucial aspect of social cognition: the ability to empathize with the feelings of another. In contrast to theory of mind, a capacity that has often been observed to be impaired in individuals with autism, much less is known about the capacity of individuals with autism for affect sharing. Based on previous data suggesting that empathy deficits in autism are a function of interoceptive deficits related to alexithymia, we aimed to investigate empathic brain responses in autistic and control participants with high and low degrees of alexithymia. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we measured empathic brain responses with an ‘empathy for pain’ paradigm assessing empathic brain responses in a real-life social setting that does not rely on attention to, or recognition of, facial affect cues. Confirming previous findings, empathic brain responses to the suffering of others were associated with increased activation in left anterior insula and the strength of this signal was predictive of the degree of alexithymia in both autistic and control groups but did not vary as a function of group. Importantly, there was no difference in the degree of empathy between autistic and control groups after accounting for alexithymia. These findings suggest that empathy deficits observed in autism may be due to the large comorbidity between alexithymic traits and autism, rather than representing a necessary feature of the social impairments in autism.
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影响因子：
9.2
作者：
Cheng, Yawei;Lin, Ching-Po;Decety, Jean
通讯作者：
Decety, Jean
影响因子：
9.2
作者：
Adolphs, Ralph;Spezio, Michael L.;Parlier, Morgan;Piven, Joseph
通讯作者：
Piven, Joseph
DOI：
10.1073/pnas.0935845100
发表时间：
2003-04-29
影响因子：
11.1
作者：
Carr, L;Iacoboni, M;Lenzi, GL
通讯作者：
Lenzi, GL
影响因子：
3.2
作者：
Adolphs, R;Sears, L;Piven, J
通讯作者：
Piven, J
影响因子：
2.5
作者：
Critchley, HD
通讯作者：
Critchley, HD