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Growing evidence suggests that empathy is a relevant psychological trait to face the challenges imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, but at the present very little is known on whether this multi-dimensional construct has been affected by the pandemic outbreak differently in its separate components. Here, we aimed at filling this gap by capitalizing on the opportunity of having collected data from different self-report measures and cognitive tasks assessing the main dimensions of empathy immediately before the beginning of the global pandemic and about one year later. The results showed a detrimental impact of the pandemic outbreak on empathic social skills but not on both cognitive (perspective-taking) and emotional empathy that instead significantly improved. Thus, reduced empathic social skills could be a weakness to be targeted in psychological interventions to help people cope with the mental health challenges related to COVID-19 pandemic, whereas the ability of understanding another’s mental states and emotions could represent a strength in dealing with the current long-lasting crisis.

Background: Recent evidence has converged in showing that the lateral occipitotemporal cortex is over-recruited during implicit motor imagery in elderly and in patients with neurodegenerative disorders, such as Parkinson&rsquo, s disease. These data suggest that when automatically imaging movements, individuals exploit neural resources in the visual areas to compensate for the decline in activating motor representations. Thus, the occipitotemporal cortex could represent a cortical target of non-invasive brain stimulation combined with cognitive training to enhance motor imagery performance. Here, we aimed at shedding light on the role of the left and right lateral occipitotemporal cortex in implicit motor imagery. Methods: We applied online, high-frequency, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over the left and right lateral occipitotemporal cortex while healthy right-handers judged the laterality of hand images. Results: With respect to the sham condition, left hemisphere stimulation specifically reduced accuracy in judging the laterality of right-hand images. Instead, the hallmark of motor simulation, i.e., the biomechanical effect, was never influenced by rTMS. Conclusions: The lateral occipitotemporal cortex seems to be involved in mental representation of the dominant hand, at least in right-handers, but not in reactivating sensorimotor information during simulation. These findings provide useful hints for developing combined brain stimulation and behavioural trainings to improve motor imagery.