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Background: Individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) are theorized to experience lower cognitive empathy but heightened affective empathy. Despite meta-analyses addressing cognitive empathy, affective empathy remains unexplored. This pre-registered systematic review and meta-analysis investigated affective empathy in individuals with BPD or high BPD traits relative to healthy comparisons, using a multidimensional approach including, early affective empathy, emotion contagion, and empathic concern., Methods: Systematic search of SCOPUS, PubMed, Medline COMPLETE, and PsycINFO (June 27, 2022, May 14, 2023, and July 1, 2024) was completed. Included studies compared affective empathy in those with BPD/high BPD traits with healthy comparisons, utilized experimental or self-report designs, and were peer-reviewed or PhD theses. Risk of bias was assessed using the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale., Results: Among 22 eligible studies identified, results revealed individuals with BPD/high BPD traits showed significantly higher emotion contagion (N pooled  = 1797, g = -1.10, 95 % CI [-1.57, -0.62]). No significant differences were found in empathic concern (N pooled  = 1545, g = 0.06, 95 % CI [-0.10, 0.22]), or early affective empathy for anger (N pooled  = 245, g = 0.28, 95 % CI [-0.0.53, 1.09]) and happiness, (N pooled  = 189, g = 0.34, 95 % CI [-0.1.50, 2.18])., Limitations: Few included studies for early affective empathy, methodological shortcomings in the broader literature and study heterogeneity suggest caution when interpreting these effects, emphasizing the need for targeted research., Conclusions: While individuals with BPD/high BPD traits are more likely to subjectively experience others' distress through emotion contagion, no differences were found in early affective empathy or ability to direct sympathy and concern towards others., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Pain is perceived not only by personal experience but also vicariously. Pain empathy is the ability to share and understand other's intentions and emotions in their painful conditions, which can be divided into cognitive and emotional empathy. It remains unclear how centrally acting analgesics would modulate brain activity related to pain empathy and which component of pain empathy would be altered by analgesics. In this study, we examined the effects of the analgesic tramadol on the brain activity for pain empathy in healthy adults. We used 2 tasks to assess brain activity for pain empathy. In experiment 1, we used a well-established picture-based pain empathy task involving passive observation of other's pain. In experiment 2, we developed a novel pain empathy task to assess brain activity during cognitive and emotional empathy for pain separately in a single task. We conducted a double-blind, placebo-controlled within-subject crossover study with functional magnetic resonance imaging for 33 participants in experiment 1 and 31 participants in experiment 2, respectively. In experiment 1, we found that tramadol decreased activation in the supramarginal gyrus during observation of other's pain compared with placebo. Supramarginal gyrus activation correlated negatively with the thermal pain threshold. In experiment 2, we found that tramadol decreased activation in angular gyrus in cognitive empathy for pain compared with placebo but did not change brain activity in emotional empathy for pain. PERSPECTIVE: Centrally acting analgesics such as tramadol may have not only analgesic effects on self-experienced pain but also on the complex neural processing of pain empathy., (Copyright © 2024 United States Association for the Study of Pain, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Altruism is an enigmatic form of prosocial behavior, characterized by diverse motivations and significant interindividual differences. Studying neural mechanisms of altruism is crucial to identify objective markers of pro- and antisocial tendencies in behavior. This study was designed to delve into the mechanisms of altruism by analyzing EEG-based functional connectivity patterns within the framework of the network approach. To experimentally induce a situation of altruistic decision-making, we employed the Pain versus Gain (PvsG) task, which implies making choices concerning financial self-benefit and pain of the other. Our results reveal that the behavioral measure of altruism in the experiment correlated with emotional empathy, which is in line with the "empathy-altruism" hypothesis. Applying the network approach to EEG functional connectivity analysis, we discovered that the very process of decision-making in the PvsG is characterized by the synchronous activity of structures in the right hemisphere, which are involved in empathy for pain. The prosociality of decisions was reflected in functional connectivity between the rostral ACC and orbital IFG in the left hemisphere and the overall network centrality of the caudal ACC. This finding additionally points to the distinct functional roles of the ACC subregions in altruistic decision-making. The proposed neural mechanisms of altruism can further be used to identify neurophysiological markers of prosociality in behavior., (© 2024. The Psychonomic Society, Inc.)

Background: Emotion regulation (ER) is considered central in adolescent psychopathology, and ER strategies may change during challenging times, such as a global pandemic. Despite this, there remains a limited understanding of individual differences in ER mechanisms and their associations with psychopathology. This study examined whether and how cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression, and self-compassion changed over COVID-19 and how these changes uniquely predicted adolescents' depressive symptoms., Methods: A total of 2,411 adolescents (58.6% females; M age  = 18.51, SD = 0.80) completed the Emotional Regulation Questionnaire, the Self-compassion Scale, and the Symptom Checklist-90 before COVID-19 (in 2019) and during COVID-19 (in 2020). The predictive associations between each ER strategy and depressive symptoms were tested with latent change score models., Results: Adolescents' use of expressive suppression and self-compassion strategies both increased during COVID-19. More increases in expressive suppression predicted more depressive symptoms, whereas more increases in self-compassion predicted fewer depressive symptoms. Although, on average, cognitive reappraisal did not change, it did show significant variations within the sample - increases (vs. decreases) in cognitive appraisal predicted fewer depressive symptoms., Conclusions: The study indicates how adolescents' ER strategies changed during the unprecedented global pandemic. It underscores protective roles of increased cognitive reappraisal and self-compassion, as well as the adverse consequence of heightened expressive suppression on adolescents' depressive symptoms. Findings offer insights for targeted interventions aimed at addressing specific ER strategies., (© 2024 Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.)

Social media is a hotbed of interpersonal conflict and aggression. Platforms such as Twitter and Instagram are used by more than 62% of the global population, facilitating billions of user interactions every day. However, many of these exchanges involve hostile, insensitive, and antisocial behaviors. This raises the question: is empathy blunted on social media? Substantial evidence demonstrates that humans tend to behave more rudely in virtual settings, but considering the scarcity of physiological data collected under these circumstances, it remains unclear how the neural systems guiding social cognition and empathy may function differently in online interactions. We propose the "Virtual Disengagement Hypothesis," a conceptual framework to explain the prevalence of hostility online. It posits that interactions occurring on social media omit social cues that facilitate the assessment of a social partner's affective state, such as facial expressions and vocal tone, and thus fail to sufficiently recruit brain circuitry involved in empathy, such as the anterior cingulate cortex, insula, and prefrontal cortex. Additionally, interactions on social media occur asynchronously and in a "replayed" context, which may further limit recruitment of empathy systems. As a result of this diminished sensitivity to others' states, users may be predisposed to inconsiderate or outright antisocial behaviors. Given the massive and growing base of users on these platforms, we urge researchers to expand efforts that focus on neuroimaging in virtual settings with a particular emphasis on developing social media-relevant behavioral designs., (© 2024. The Psychonomic Society, Inc.)

Self- and other-directed compassion have been linked with better mental and physical health but research on factors contributing to their development is scarce. Previous studies indicate a possible causal relationship of lipids with personality and socioemotional functioning. As an extension to earlier research, in the present study we examine whether lipids assessed in adolescence and adulthood are associated with self-compassion and other-directed compassion in adulthood. The study utilizes data on lipids from two follow-ups in the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1986 at ages 15-16 and 33-35. In the latter follow-up also self-compassion and other-directed compassion were assessed with the self-compassion scale - short form and the subscale for compassion in the dispositional positive emotions scale, respectively. The sample for the cross-sectional associations of lipids in adulthood with the compassion variables in adulthood includes 1,459 participants, whereas the sample for the longitudinal associations of lipids in adolescence and the compassion variables in adulthood consists of 1,509 participants. The associations were examined with hierarchical linear regression (lipids as continuous variables) and univariate general linear model (lipids as categorical variables). The results suggest that in women, high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol in adolescence is associated with high empathic concern (a component of other-directed compassion) in adulthood. The results show further that, in women, an HDL cholesterol level above 1.2 mmol/L in adulthood is associated with high other-directed compassion and empathic concern in adulthood. The present study provides tentative evidence that biological factors such as lipids might play a role in the development of empathic concern and other-directed compassion., (© 2024 The Author(s). Scandinavian Journal of Psychology published by Scandinavian Psychological Associations and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Empathy is an ability to fully understand and feel the mental states of others. We emphasize that empathy is elicited by the transmission of pain, fear, and sensory information. In clinical studies, impaired empathy has been observed in most psychiatric conditions. However, the precise impairment mechanism of the network systems on the pathogenesis of empathy impairment in psychiatric disorders is still unclear. Multiple lines of evidence suggest that disturbances in the excitatory/inhibitory balance in neurologic disorders are key to empathetic impairment in psychiatric disorders. Therefore, we here describe the roles played by the anterior cingulate cortex- and medial prefrontal cortex-dependent neural circuits and their impairments in psychiatric disorders, including anxiety, depression, and autism. In addition, we review recent studies on the role of microglia in neural network excitation/inhibition imbalance, which contributes to a better understanding of the neural network excitation/inhibition imbalance and may open up innovative psychiatric therapies., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Suicide is the second leading cause of death in youth, and depression is a strong proximal predictor of adolescent suicide. It is important to identify psychological factors that may protect against suicide ideation in depressed adolescents. Self-compassion may be such a factor. Converging evidence indicates the inverse association between self-compassion and suicide ideation, but the neural mechanisms underlying their link remain unknown. Because self-referential caudate activity is associated with both self-compassion and suicide ideation, its functional connectivity might explain their relationship. In this study, we examined the relationship between self-compassion and caudate functional connectivity during self-appraisals, a typical self-referential paradigm, and their associations with suicide ideation in both depressed and healthy youth. In the scanner, 79 depressed youth and 36 healthy controls evaluated, from various perspectives, whether phrases they heard were self-descriptive. Self-compassion and suicide ideation were rated with self-report and interview-based measures. We found that self-compassion was associated with stronger left caudate functional connectivity with bilateral posterior superior temporal sulcus/temporoparietal junction, the left middle temporal gyrus (MTG), and the left middle occipital gyrus during positive versus negative self-appraisals. Stronger left caudate connectivity with the left MTG explained the association between higher self-compassion and lower suicide ideation, even controlling for non-suicide ideation depression severity, anxiety severity, and non-suicidal self-injurious behavior. The findings suggest that the left caudate to MTG connectivity during positive versus negative self-referential processing could be a biomarker to be targeted by neural stimulation interventions for reducing suicide ideation in depressed youth, combined with self-compassion interventions., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Neuroscientific studies have highlighted the role of the default mode network (DMN) in processing narrative information. Here, we examined whether the neural synchronization of the DMN tracked the appearances of protagonists and antagonists when viewing highly engaging, socially rich audiovisual narratives. Using inter-subject correlation analysis on two independent, publicly available movie-watching fMRI datasets, we computed whole-brain neural synchronization during the appearance of the protagonists and antagonists. Results showed that the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) had higher ISC values during the appearance of the protagonists than the antagonists. Importantly, these findings were generalized in both datasets. We discuss the results in the context of information integration and emotional empathy, which are relevant to functions of the IFG. Our study presents generalizable evidence that the IFG show distinctive synchronization patterns due to differences in narrative roles., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press.)

Different empathic responses are often reported in autism but remain controversial. To investigate which component of empathy is most affected by autism, we examined the affective, cognitive, and motivational components of empathy in 25 5- to 8-year-old autistic and 27 neurotypical children. Participants were presented with visual stimuli depicting people's limbs in painful or nonpainful situations while their eye movements, pupillary responses, and verbal ratings of pain intensity and empathic concern were recorded. The results indicate an emotional overarousal and reduced empathic concern to others' pain in autism. Compared with neurotypical children, autistic children displayed larger pupil dilation accompanied by attentional avoidance to others' pain. Moreover, even though autistic children rated others in painful situations as painful, they felt less sorry than neurotypical children. Interestingly, autistic children felt more sorry in nonpainful situations compared with neurotypical children. These findings demonstrated an emotional overarousal in response to others' pain in autistic children, and provide important implications for clinical practice aiming to promote socio-emotional understanding in autistic children., (© 2024 International Society for Autism Research and Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Expressing emotions with others can be difficult as it puts individuals in a position of potential vulnerability. Research suggests that people are willing to express their emotions with communal partners; however, few studies have examined processes that might explain how this occurs. Using a cross-sectional design, we examined interpersonal accuracy and empathic effort as factors that support the likelihood of expression in communal relationships. Participants ( N = 219) reported the communal motivation, accuracy, and effort they perceived from five targets varying in closeness (e.g., best friend, acquaintance, etc.); they rated their likelihood of expressing happiness, pride, gratitude, sadness, anxiety, guilt, and anger with each target. Perceived accuracy and effort were both significant mediators of the association between perceived communal motivation and reported likelihood of expressing all emotions. Perceived accuracy was a stronger predictor of the likelihood of expression than effort. These findings indicate that perceiving greater accuracy and effort each independently supports a greater likelihood of expression. A willingness to express emotions is critical to developing close relationships and the current work identifies processes that may encourage this willingness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Attentional bias to threat has been almost exclusively examined after participants experienced repeated pairings between a conditioned stimulus (CS) and an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US). This study aimed to determine whether threat-related attentional capture can result from observational learning, when participants acquire knowledge of the aversive qualities of a stimulus without themselves experiencing aversive outcomes. Non-clinical young-adult participants ( N  = 38) first watched a video of an individual (the demonstrator) performing a Pavlovian conditioning task in which one colour was paired with shock (CS+) and another colour was neutral (CS-). They then carried out visual search for a shape-defined target. Oculomotor measures evidenced an attentional bias toward the CS+ colour, suggesting that threat-related attentional capture can ensue from observational learning. Exploratory analyses also revealed that this effect was positively correlated with empathy for the demonstrator. Our findings extend empirical and theoretical knowledge about threat-driven attention and provide valuable insights to better understand the formation of anxiety disorders.

Objective: To assess whether there are individual differences in emotional reactions to bistable images, and if so, to identify some of the psychological factors that predict them., Background: Bistable images - which have two competing perceptual interpretations - have long been used in the scientific study of consciousness. Here we applied a different lens and investigated emotional reactions to them. Method Participants were adult humans in a cross-sectional study. Participants were presented with three bistable images and rated their emotional reactions to experiencing bistability. They also completed measures of intolerance of uncertainty, cognitive empathy, affective empathy, and negative affect. Results There were marked individual differences in these reactions, ranging from feeling highly negative to highly positive. These individual differences in emotional response to bistability were linked to a number of psychological processes: intolerance of uncertainty, cognitive empathy, and negative affect, but not affective empathy. Conclusions These finding have important implications because: (a) these emotional reactions could distort scientific investigations that use these stimuli to study non-emotional perceptual and cognitive processes; and (b) they highlight that this approach offers a useful window into how individuals react to these stimuli that demonstrate that there is not always a single viable interpretation of the world around us., (© 2023 The Authors. Journal of Personality published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

The motivations to protect oneself and others have often been seen as conflicting. Here, we discuss recent evidence that self-defensive mechanisms may in fact be recruited to enable the helping of others. In some instances, the defensive response to a threat may even be more decisive in promoting helping than the response to a conspecific's distress (as predicted by empathy-altruism models). In light of this evidence, we propose that neural mechanisms implicated in self-defence may have been repurposed through evolution to enable the protection of others, and that defence and care may be convergent rather than conflicting functions. Finally, we present and discuss a working model of the shared brain mechanisms implicated in defence of both self and others., Competing Interests: Declaration of interests No interests are declared., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The way parents report their child's emotional and behavioral difficulties is important both for identifying the child's needs, diagnosis, and prevention. This study examined to what extent parents' internal processes predict the way in which parents report their child's emotional and behavioral difficulties on the SDQ, as mediated by parental feelings. Parents of children who were referred to a community mental health clinic completed a self-report questionnaire including the following scales: adulthood attachment style, self-regulation difficulty, personal well-being, self-compassion parental feelings, and their child's emotional-behavioral difficulties. Study findings indicated that parents' internal processes do not directly predict parents' report of their children's mental difficulties on the SDQ, only when mediated by parental feelings. These findings highlight the significance of parental feelings in reporting children's behavioral and emotional difficulties. It also contributes to the body of knowledge concerning the importance of caring for parents' needs and feelings and overall parenthood., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are subjective phenomena during which individuals feel disembodied or perceive themselves as outside of their physical bodies, often resulting in profound and transformative effects. In particular, experiencers report greater heightened pro-social behavior, including more peaceful relationships, tolerance, and empathy. Drawing parallels with the phenomenon of ego dissolution induced by certain psychedelic substances, we explore the notion that OBEs may engender these changes through ego dissolution, which fosters a deep-seated sense of unity and interconnectedness with others. We then assess potential brain mechanisms underlying the link between OBEs and empathy, considering the involvement of the temporoparietal junction and the Default Mode Network. This manuscript offers an examination of the potential pathways through which OBEs catalyze empathic enhancement, shedding light on the intricate interplay between altered states of consciousness and human empathy., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

Although empathy for pain plays an important role in positive interpersonal relationships and encourages engagement in prosocial behavior, it remains largely unknown whether empathy for pain could be effectively altered by psychophysiological techniques. This study aimed to investigate the impact of a single session of diaphragmatic breathing practice on empathy for pain and examine the potential mechanism involving interoceptive awareness. A total of 66 healthy participants were randomly assigned to the intervention group or the control group. The intervention group received a 15-minute diaphragmatic breathing (DB) practice with real-time biofeedback, while the control group was to gaze at a black screen at rest and not engaged in any other activities. Before and after the invention, all participants were instructed to evaluate the intensity and unpleasantness of empathy for pain while watching different pictures with pain or non-pain conditions. The Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA) was then administered to measure interoceptive awareness. The results indicated a significant interaction between group and time with regard to empathy for pain and MAIA. The DB group showed a statistically significant decrease in both pain intensity and unpleasantness during the pain picture condition, as well as a noteworthy increase in MAIA scores. The control group did not demonstrate any substantial changes. More importantly, the regulation of attention, a dimension of MAIA, had a significant mediating effect on the impact of diaphragmatic breathing on reported unpleasantness. Diaphragmatic breathing could serve as a simple, convenient, and practical strategy to optimize human empathy for pain that warrants further investigation, which has important implications not only for individuals with impaired empathy for pain but also for the improvement of interoceptive awareness., (© 2024 Society for Psychophysiological Research.)

Introduction: Currently narcissism is considered one of the most widespread phenomenon. As a consequence, its different types (grandiose and vulnerable narcissism) have been investigated from several different perspectives. The present research attempts to explore the differences between the two types of narcissism and their links with different cognitive components that are connected to these personality traits. The primary aim of our study is to investigate the possible connections among maladaptive schemas (entitlement, vulnerability, emotional deprivation) and cognitive evaluation systems (self-esteem, systemizing-empathizing) and narcissism., Methods: We applied both correlation and path analyses to explore the hypothesized associations., Results: The results show that early maladaptive schemas are strongly associated with narcissism and the empathizing system. The different subtypes of narcissism have different connections with self-esteem., Conclusion: Our results show that the two types of narcissism have different manifestations and connections with the early maladaptive schemas, Emphatizing Quotient, and self-esteem. Our empirical results serve as important and empirically supported inputs to counseling and clinical practice., (© 2024 The Authors. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology published by Scandinavian Psychological Associations and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Objectives: Self-compassion has been identified as a psychological resource for aging well. To date, self-compassion among older adults has typically been conceptualized as a trait variable. This study examined whether day-to-day (state) variability in self-compassion was associated with negative affective reactivity to daily stressors., Methods: Daily diary assessment methods were used to examine the potential moderating role of between- and within-person self-compassion on the relationship between daily stressors and negative affect. A community-based sample of 107 older adults aged 65+ completed questionnaires once daily over 14 days., Results: Multilevel modeling revealed that 37% of the variance in self-compassion occurred within persons. Daily self-compassion moderated the relationship between daily stressor exposure and daily negative affect. On days with greater stressor exposure than usual, older adults showed less negative affective reactivity on days when self-compassion was higher, compared with days when self-compassion was lower. No moderating effects were observed for between-person (trait) self-compassion., Discussion: These findings suggest that self-compassion in older adults should be conceptualized as both state and trait variables and that state self-compassion may be protective in the stress-reactivity pathway. Future research should investigate whether brief self-compassion interventions might help older adults to avoid or downregulate negative emotions in response to stressors., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved. For commercial re-use, please contact reprints@oup.com for reprints and translation rights for reprints. All other permissions can be obtained through our RightsLink service via the Permissions link on the article page on our site—for further information please contact journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Background: Prosocial behaviours - acts that benefit others - are of crucial importance for many species including humans. However, adolescents with conduct problems (CP), unlike their typically developing (TD) peers, demonstrate markedly reduced engagement in prosocial behaviours. This pattern is particularly pronounced in adolescents with CP and high levels of callous-unemotional traits (CP/HCU) who are at increased risk of developing psychopathy in adulthood. While a substantial amount of research has investigated the cognitive-affective mechanisms thought to underlie antisocial behaviour, much less is known about the mechanisms that could explain reduced prosocial behaviours in adolescents with CP., Methods: Here we examined the willingness to exert effort to benefit oneself (self) and another person (other, prosocial condition) in children with CP/HCU, CP and lower levels of CU traits (CP/LCU) and their TD peers. The task captured both prosocial choices, and actual effort exerted following prosocial choices, in adolescent boys aged 11-16 (27 CP/HCU; 34 CP/LCU; 33 TD). We used computational modelling to reveal the mechanistic processes involved when choosing prosocial acts., Results: We found that both CP/HCU and CP/LCU groups were more averse to initiating effortful prosocial acts than TD adolescents - both at a cognitive and at a behavioural level. Strikingly, even if they chose to initiate a prosocial act, the CP/HCU group exerted less effort following this prosocial choice than other groups., Conclusions: Our findings indicate that reduced exertion of effort to benefit others may be an important factor that differentiates adolescents with CP/HCU from their peers with CP/LCU. They offer new insights into what might drive low prosocial behaviour in adolescents with CP, including vulnerabilities that may particularly characterise those with high levels of CU traits., (© 2024 The Authors. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.)

Both parasympathetic nervous system regulation and receipt of social support from close relationships contribute to prosocial development, although few studies have examined their combined influences in adolescence and particularly within racially and ethnically minoritized populations. In this longitudinal study of 229 U.S. Mexican-origin adolescents (48% female-identifying), youths reported on receipt of social support from family and friends from 10 to 16 years, had their baseline respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) measured at 17 years, reported their prosocial behavior and completed the Mind in the Eyes test to assess cognitive empathy at 17 and 19 years, and reported their prosocial civic behavior (i.e., community activity) at 19 years. Family social support predicted prosocial behavior at 17 years, and friend social support predicted prosocial civic behavior at 19 years. Compared to youths with lower or higher baseline RSA, youths with moderate RSA reported more prosocial civic behavior, had greater cognitive empathy, and tended to report more general prosocial behavior at 19 years. The quadratic association between baseline RSA and cognitive empathy was stronger for youths with greater family social support. These findings are the first to extend the evidence that moderate baseline parasympathetic nervous system activity supports prosocial development into late adolescence and with the U.S. Mexican-origin community, and these findings address calls for more integrative biopsychosocial studies of prosociality. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Accounts of shared representations posit that the experience of pain and pain empathy rely on similar neural mechanisms. Experimental research employing novel analytical and methodological approaches has made significant advances in both the identification and targeted manipulation of such shared experiences and their neural underpinnings. This revealed that painful experiences can be shared on different representational levels, from pain-specific to domain-general features, such as negative affect and its regulation. In view of direct links between such representations and social behaviors such as prosocial behavior, conditions characterized by aberrant pain processing may come along with heavy impairments in the social domain, depending on the affected representational level. This has wide potential implications in light of the high prevalence of pain-related clinical conditions, their management, and the overuse of pain medication. In this review and opinion paper, we aim to chart the path toward a better understanding of the link between shared affect and prosocial behavior., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest None., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Virtual reality (VR) technology is often referred to as the 'ultimate empathy machine' due to its capability to immerse users in alternate perspectives and environments beyond their immediate physical reality. In this study, participants will be immersed in 3-dimensional 360° VR videos where actors express different emotions (sadness, happiness, anger, and anxiousness). The primary objective is to investigate the potential relationship between participants' empathy levels and the changes in their physiological attributes. The empathy levels will be self-reported with questionnaires, and physiological attributes will be measured using different sensors. The main outcome of the study will be a machine learning model to predict a person's empathy level based on their physiological responses while watching VR videos. Despite the existence of established methodologies and metrics in research and clinical domains, our aim is to contribute to addressing the gap of a universally accepted "gold standard" for assessing empathy. Additionally, we expect to deepen our understanding of the relationship between different emotions and psychological attributes, gender differences in empathy, and the impact of narrative context on empathic responses., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Kizhevska et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

This study aims to investigate the development of pitch-matching, rhythmic entrainment, and socioemotional skills in children who received formal music instruction and other non-music based after school programs. Eighty-three children, averaging 6.81 years old at baseline, were enrolled in either a music, sports, or no after-school program and followed over four years. The music program involved formal and systematic instruction in music theory, instrumental technique, and performance. Most control participants had no music education; however, in some instances, participants received minimal music education at school or at church. Musical development was measured using a pitch-matching and drumming-based rhythmic entrainment task. Sharing behavior was measured using a variation of the dictator game, and empathy was assessed using three different assessments: the Index of Empathy for Children and Adolescence (trait empathy), the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (theory of mind), and a Fiction Emotion-Matching task (state empathy). Results revealed no time-related associations in pitch-matching ability; however, formal music instruction improved pitch-matching relative to controls. On the contrary, improvements in rhythmic entrainment were best explained by age-related changes rather than music instruction. This study also found limited support for a positive association between formal music instruction and socioemotional skills. That is, individuals with formal music instruction exhibited improved emotion-matching relative to those with sports training. In terms of general socioemotional development, children's trait-level affective empathy did not improve over time, while sharing, theory of mind, and state empathy did. Additionally, pitch-matching and rhythmic entrainment did not reliably predict any socioemotional measures, with associations being trivial to small. While formal music instruction benefitted pitch-matching ability and emotion-matching to an audiovisual stimulus, it was not a significant predictor of rhythmic entrainment or broader socioemotional development. These findings suggest that the transfer of music training may be most evident in near or similar domains., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Villanueva et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

This present study investigates emotion recognition in children and adults and its association with EQ and motor empathy. Overall, 58 children (33 5-6-year-olds, 25 7-9-year-olds) and 61 adults (24 young adults, 37 parents) participated in this study. Each participant received an EQ questionnaire and completed the dynamic emotion expression recognition task, where participants were asked to identify four basic emotions (happy, sad, fearful, and angry) from neutral to fully expressed states, and the motor empathy task, where participants' facial muscle activity was recorded. The results showed that "happy" was the easiest expression for all ages; 5- to 6-year-old children performed equally well as adults. The accuracies for "fearful," "angry," and "sad" expressions were significantly lower in children than in adults. For motor empathy, 7- to 9-year-old children exhibited the highest level of facial muscle activity, while the young adults showed the lowest engagement. Importantly, individual EQ scores positively correlated with the motor empathy index in adults but not in children. In sum, our study echoes the previous literature, showing that the identification of negative emotions is still difficult for children aged 5-9 but that this improves in late childhood. Our results also suggest that stronger facial mimicry responses are positively related to a higher level of empathy in adults.

Human cognitive capacities that enable flexible cooperation may have evolved in parallel with the expansion of frontoparietal cortical networks, particularly the default network. Conversely, human antisocial behavior and trait antagonism are broadly associated with reduced activity, impaired connectivity, and altered structure of the default network. Yet, behaviors like interpersonal manipulation and exploitation may require intact or even superior social cognition. Using a reinforcement learning model of decision-making on a modified trust game, we examined how individuals adjusted their cooperation rate based on a counterpart's cooperation and social reputation. We observed that learning signals in the default network updated the predicted utility of cooperation or defection and scaled with reciprocal cooperation. These signals were weaker in callous (vs. compassionate) individuals but stronger in those who were more exploitative (vs. honest and humble). Further, they accounted for associations between exploitativeness, callousness, and reciprocal cooperation. Separately, behavioral sensitivity to prior reputation was reduced in callous but not exploitative individuals and selectively scaled with responses of the medial temporal subsystem of the default network. Overall, callousness was characterized by blunted behavioral and default network sensitivity to cooperation incentives. Exploitativeness predicted heightened sensitivity to others' cooperation but not social reputation. We speculate that both compassion and exploitativeness may reflect cognitive adaptations to social living, enabled by expansion of the default network in anthropogenesis., Competing Interests: Competing interests statement:The authors declare no competing interest.

The present study examined whether people higher in psychopathy experienced less self-reported and psychophysiological nociceptive pressure than people lower in psychopathy. We also examined whether psychopathy affects empathy for others' pain via self-reported and psychophysiological measures. Three hundred and sixty-nine students (18-78 years; M = 26, SD = 9.34) were screened for psychopathic traits using the Youth Psychopathy Inventory (YPI). Stratified sampling was used to recruit 49 adults residing in the highest (n = 23) and lowest (n = 26) 20% of the psychopathy spectrum. Using skin conductance response (SCR) and self-report responses, participants responded to individually adjusted intensities of pneumatic pressure and others' pain images and completed self-reported psychopathy and empathy measures (Triarchic Psychopathy Measure, TriPm; Interpersonal Reactivity Index, IRI). People higher in psychopathy self-reported feeling less nociceptive pressure compared to people lower in psychopathy, yet we did not find any differences in SCR to nociceptive pressure. However, when viewing other people in pain, the high psychopathy group displayed lower SCR and lower self-reported empathy compared to those lower in psychopathy. Our results suggest psychopathic traits relate to problems empathising with others' pain, as well as the perception of nociceptive pressure. We also show support for the theory of dual harm which has been receiving increasing attention. Consequently, psychopathy interventions should focus both on recognising and empathising with the pain of others., Competing Interests: The authors have declared no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Alshukri et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Research examining the purported association between violent gaming and aggression remains controversial due to concerns related to methodology, unclear neurocognitive mechanisms, and the failure to adequately consider the role of individual differences in susceptibility. To help address these concerns, we used fMRI and an emotional empathy task to examine whether acute and cumulative violent gaming exposure were associated with abnormalities in emotional empathy as a function of trait-empathy. Emotional empathy was targeted given its involvement in regulating not only aggression, but also other important social functions such as compassion and prosocial behaviour. We hypothesized that violent gaming exposure increases the risk of aberrant social behaviour by altering the aversive value of distress cues. Contrary to expectations, neither behavioural ratings nor empathy-related brain activity varied as a function of violent gaming exposure. Notably, however, activation patterns in somatosensory and motor cortices reflected an interaction between violent gaming exposure and trait empathy. Thus, our results are inconsistent with a straightforward relationship between violent gaming exposure and reduced empathy. Furthermore, they highlight the importance of considering both individual differences in susceptibility and other aspects of cognition related to social functioning to best inform public concern regarding safe gaming practices., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press.)

Background: The present longitudinal investigation had two major goals. First, we intended to clarify whether depressed patients are characterized by impairments of emotional awareness for the self and the other during acute illness and whether these impairments diminish in the course of an inpatient psychiatric treatment program. Previous research based on the performance measure Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS) provided inconsistent findings concerning emotional self-awareness in clinical depression. Second, we investigated whether cognitive and affective empathic abilities change from acute illness to recovery in depressed patients., Methods: Fifty-eight depressed patients were tested on admission and after 6-8 weeks of inpatient psychiatric treatment. A sample of fifty-three healthy individuals were also examined twice at an interval of 6-8 weeks. The LEAS and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) were administered to assess emotional awareness and empathic abilities. Written texts were digitalized and then analyzed using the electronic scoring program geLEAS, the German electronic Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale., Results: Depressed patients reported more depressive symptoms than healthy controls and less severe depressive symptomatology at time 2 compared to time 1. Independent of time, depressed individuals tended to show lower geLEAS self scores and had lower geLEAS other scores than healthy individuals. Depressed patients showed higher personal distress scores than healthy individuals at both measurement times. No group differences were observed for the cognitive empathy scales of the IRI (perspective taking and fantasy) and empathic concern, but empathic concern decreased significantly in depressed patients from time 1 to time 2. Empathic abilities as assessed by the IRI were not significantly correlated with emotional awareness for others, neither in the whole sample, nor in the patient and control subsample., Conclusions: Depressed patients seem to be characterized by impairments in emotional awareness of others during acute illness and recovery, but they also tend to show deficits in emotional self-awareness compared to healthy individuals. Self-reported cognitive empathic abilities seem to be at normal levels in depressed patients, but their heightened self-focused affective empathy may represent a vulnerability factor for depressive disorders., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Empathy toward suffering individuals serves as potent driver for prosocial behavior. However, it remains unclear whether prosociality induced by empathy for another person's pain persists once that person's suffering diminishes. To test this, participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing a binary social decision task that involved allocation of points to themselves and another person. In block one, participants completed the task after witnessing frequent painful stimulation of the other person, and in block two, after observing low frequency of painful stimulation. Drift-diffusion modeling revealed an increased initial bias toward making prosocial decisions in the first block compared with baseline that persisted in the second block. These results were replicated in an independent behavioral study. An additional control study showed that this effect may be specific to empathy as stability was not evident when prosocial decisions were driven by a social norm such as reciprocity. Increased neural activation in dorsomedial prefrontal cortex was linked to empathic concern after witnessing frequent pain and to a general prosocial decision bias after witnessing rare pain. Altogether, our findings show that empathy for pain elicits a stable inclination toward making prosocial decisions even as their suffering diminishes., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

We were interested in how people in a romantic relationship would perceive the intelligence of their partners who have high or low trait anger. Specifically, we referred to the tension between compassion (low anger) and competence (high intelligence) in mate choice. Some evolutionary theories suggest that mating might be considered a bargaining process between these two higher-order attributes. Our study involved 148 heterosexual couples in romantic relationships. We measured the relationship between relationship satisfaction, trait anger, objective intelligence, self-assessed intelligence, and subjectively assessed partners' intelligence. We found that angrier men were less satisfied in their romantic relationship than those men who were less angry, and their partners were also less satisfied in the relationship. Additionally, women perceived angrier men as less intelligent, an effect that remained after controlling for men's objective intelligence. Lastly, we found that women's perception of their partner's intelligence mediated the link between men's anger and relationship satisfaction for both sexes. Our findings suggest that both anger and intelligence play important roles in romantic relationship functioning, consistent with evolutionary theories that emphasize the value of competence (i.e., intelligence) and compassion (i.e., low anger) in romantic partners. Furthermore, our study highlights the importance of women's perception of their partner's intelligence in determining the quality of the relationship., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared that there were no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship or the publication of this article.

Introduction: Few studies have focused on social cognition in dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), even though some brain structures being well known as underlying social cognitive processes are directly impacted in this disease. Furthermore, social cognition processes have been mostly studied independently using evaluations with poor ecological validity. We aimed at studying the ability of a new naturalistic and multidimensional social cognition task to reveal impairments in DLB patients. We chose to compare the profile of these patients with that of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients, for which social cognition is better preserved., Method: Fifteen patients (DLB: n  = 7; AD: n  = 8) and 28 healthy controls underwent the REALSoCog task. They encountered several social situations (e.g. control versus transgressions) in a non-immersive virtual city environment allowing the assessment of moral cognition, cognitive and affective theory of mind (ToM), emotional empathy and behavioral intentions., Results: The main results showed (i) a lower ability to detect transgressions in DLB patients, particularly conventional ones, whereas moral cognition seemed better preserved in AD patients; (ii) a cognitive ToM impairment in both DLB and AD patients, while affective ToM is impaired only in DLB patients; (iii) a decreased emotional empathy specifically observed in DLB patients; (iv) more inappropriate behavioral intentions, mainly in DLB patients, but also in some AD patients., Conclusions: This study suggests the feasibility and potential interest of the REALSoCog task in revealing social cognition deficits, particularly for DLB patients by showing different social patterns as compared to AD patients. These results offer interesting clinical perspectives to develop more naturalistic tasks in such populations and for clinical differential diagnosis. Limitations and future perspectives are discussed.

Although empirical findings have indicated that both familial and neurobiological risk factors contribute to the development of callous-unemotional (CU) traits in children, relatively few studies have investigated how these two factors interact to influence these traits. The current study focused on the combined effects of parental emotion socialization and child's resting heart rate on CU traits. Parents of Chinese children (N = 166) completed the Coping with Children's Negative Scale when children were 9.39 years old (SD = 0.92), while children's resting heart rate data were collected when they were 10.21 years old (SD = 0.72). When they were 11.15 years old (SD = 0.67), parents completed the Inventory of Callous-Unemotional Traits Short-Form. Results showed that parental supportive emotion socialization was negatively associated with CU traits and Callous behaviors in particular. In addition, resting heart rate moderated the relationship between parental emotion socialization and child's CU traits. Findings provide further evidence that an interdisciplinary approach that combines both psychosocial and biological factors is essential to further our understanding of CU traits in youth., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany.)

Abstract: Eating disorders (EDs) represent a wide range of clinical symptoms related to food intake, body image, and weight issues, and include anorexia nervosa-restricting type (AN-R), anorexia nervosa-binge-purge type (AN-BP), and bulimia nervosa (BN). The aim was to investigate the characteristics of attachment, mentalization, emotion dysregulation, and empathy in a sample of 102 patients with EDs. A sample of 102 patients and therapists completed a series of measures for the assessment of ED pathology, mentalization, empathy, and emotion dysregulation. Pearson correlations and analysis of variance were used to test the characteristics of the variables among the groups. In relation to attachment and emotion dysregulation, no significant differences were found. In relation to mentalization, significant difference in good mentalization was found in AN-R subtype compared with the BN subtype. In relation to empathy, results showed significantly lower scores in BN subtype on affective empathy compared with the AN-BP subtype, and in AN-R subtype on cognitive empathy. Finally, we used Z -scores for each item ranked by value (higher to lower) to develop different clinical prototypes for each group. Our results point toward the clinical need to address the assessed variables, specifically mentalization, emotion dysregulation, and empathy, in the diagnosis and treatment of EDs., (Copyright © 2024 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.)

This study examined the empathic processing of individuals with psychopathic traits and healthy controls in response to pain, applying affective perspective-taking (Self vs. Other). Twenty subjects with high psychopathic traits and twenty control subjects performed pain judgment tasks in the study. During the tasks, late positive potentials (LPPs) of the participants were measured to assess emotional processing in reaction to visual stimuli depicting painful or non-painful situations. In early LPP time stage (500-700 ms), the control group and the psychopathic trait group exhibited comparable levels of empathic processing regarding pain. However, in late LPP time window (700-1100 ms), the control group showed a greater LPP amplitude to Pain stimuli than No-pain stimuli, whereas the psychopathic trait group exhibited non-significant amplitude differences between Pain and No-pain stimuli. These findings imply that individuals with high psychopathic traits may swiftly terminate the processing and encounter difficulties in reappraising distress cues, especially in the late stage, providing psychophysiological support for distinctive empathic processing with temporal aspects., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Administration of low-dose lipopolysaccharide (LPS) to healthy humans is a translational approach to analyze the effects of acute systemic inflammation and sickness behavior. Although studies documented that LPS-induced inflammation can alter social behavior, its impact on empathy remains poorly understood. In this double-blind, placebo-controlled study, 52 healthy female volunteers received an intravenous injection of either LPS (0.4 ng/kg body weight) or placebo and completed the Social Interaction Empathy Task (SIET) two hours after injection. Physiological responses (blood pressure, heart rate, body temperature, cytokines, cortisol) were analyzed along with sickness symptoms and mood before and after LPS or placebo administration. LPS application led to significant increases in plasma cytokines and sickness symptoms as well as low mood. Moreover, volunteers receiving LPS showed significantly less empathy for other's psychological pain than those who received placebo. Furthermore, LPS-injected volunteers with more severe sickness symptoms displayed higher pain ratings in the first-person perspective. Thus, low-grade inflammation reduces empathy for other's psychological pain which might reflect an adaptive strategy to save energy by not responding empathetically when sick oneself., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Introduction: People with Parkinson's disease (PD) often present with disabling neuropsychiatric symptoms. Compassionate mind training (CMT) is a psychological approach effective in reducing stress and promoting psychological well-being. Heart rate variability (HRV), a measure reflecting sympathovagal balance, has been associated with psychological well-being and a compassionate attitude., Aim: To assess the feasibility and effectiveness of CMT in enhancing the quality of life and psychological well-being in PD patients. Additionally, we evaluated HRV as a physiomarker for assessing the CMT outcomes., Methods: Twenty-four PD patients participated in the study. A 6-week online CMT intervention was delivered on a weekly basis. At baseline and post-intervention patients completed questionnaires assessing depression, anxiety and quality of life. In a subsample of 11 patients, HRV was measured at baseline and post-intervention in three conditions: at rest, during stress and after 3 min of deep breathing., Results: The attendance rate was 94.3%. Quality of life and perceived stigma improved post-intervention as compared with baseline (p = 0.02 and p = 0.03 for PD Questionnaire-39 total score and Stigma subscore, respectively). After CMT, patients presented better physiological regulation to stress, as measured by higher HRV as compared with baseline (p = 0.005). Notably, patients who were more resilient to stress at baseline (less decrease in HRV during stress) experienced a more substantial reduction in anxiety and depression following CMT., Conclusions: CMT is feasible and can improve quality of life and stigma in PD patients. HRV emerges as a promising physiomarker for predicting and measuring the outcomes of psychological interventions in PD., (© 2024 The Authors. European Journal of Neurology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Academy of Neurology.)

The current study examined associations between maternal negative affectivity (NA) and child disruptive behavior problems. The mediating role of child callous-unemotional (CU) traits in these relationships was also investigated. A multilevel mediation modeling approach was adopted using a sample of 100 families with children between 2.5 and 5.5 years of age ( N  = 201; mean age = 3.8, standard deviation = 1.0). The mediation models showed significant mediating effects of maternal NA through CU traits for ADHD ( β  = 0.12, p <.01), ODD ( β  =0.13, p <.01), and aggression ( β  =0.16, p <.001), and a significant direct effect for aggression ( β  = 0.12, p <.05). A structural equation modeling analysis was also performed, and overall, the results were consistent with that from mediation models, which suggested that child CU traits were significantly correlated with maternal NA ( β  = 0.252, p <.001), ADHD ( β  = 0.504, p <.001), ODD ( β  = 0.545, p <.001), and aggression ( β  = 0.686, p <.001). Our results indicated that maternal NA could serve as a potential risk factor for child CU, which, in turn, may contribute to disruptive behavior during early childhood.

To advance intervention science dedicated to improve refugees' mental health, a better understanding of factors of risk and resilience involved in the etiology and maintenance of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is needed. In the present study, we tested whether empathy and compassion, two trainable aspects of social cognition related to health, would modulate risk for PTSD after war-related trauma. Fifty-six refugees and 42 migrants from Arabic-speaking countries reported on their trauma experiences, PTSD symptoms, and perceived trait empathy and compassion. They further completed the EmpaToM, a naturalistic computer task measuring behavioral empathy and compassion. Moderation analyses revealed that behavioral, but not self-reported compassion was a significant moderator of the trauma-PTSD link. Trauma was more strongly related to PTSD symptoms when individuals had low (β =.59, t = 4.27, p <.001) as compared to high levels of behavioral compassion. Neither self-reported nor behavioral empathy moderated the trauma-PTSD link (β =.24, t = 1.57, p =.120). Findings indicate that the ability to go beyond the sharing of others' suffering and generate the positive feeling of compassion may support resilience in the context of trauma and subsequent development of PTSD. Hence, compassion may be a suitable target for prevention and intervention approaches reducing PTSD symptoms after trauma., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest None., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Oxytocin (OXT), a neuropeptide consisting of only nine amino acids, is synthesized in the paraventricular and supraoptic nuclei of the hypothalamus. Although OXT is best known for its role in lactation and parturition, recent research has shown that it also has a significant impact on social behaviors in mammals. However, a comprehensive review of this topic is still lacking. In this paper, we systematically reviewed the effects of OXT on social behavior in mammals. These effects of OXT from the perspective of five key behavioral dimensions were summarized: parental behavior, anxiety, aggression, attachment, and empathy. To date, researchers have agreed that OXT plays a positive regulatory role in a wide range of social behaviors, but there have been controversially reported results. In this review, we have provided a detailed panorama of the role of OXT in social behavior and, for the first time, delved into the underlying regulatory mechanisms, which may help better understand the multifaceted role of OXT. Levels of OXT in previous human studies were also summarized to provide insights for diagnosis of mental disorders., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest None., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Background: ChatGPT is an open-source natural language processing software that replies to users' queries. We conducted a cross-sectional study to assess people living with Multiple Sclerosis' (PwMS) preferences, satisfaction, and empathy toward two alternate responses to four frequently-asked questions, one authored by a group of neurologists, the other by ChatGPT., Methods: An online form was sent through digital communication platforms. PwMS were blind to the author of each response and were asked to express their preference for each alternate response to the four questions. The overall satisfaction was assessed using a Likert scale (1-5); the Consultation and Relational Empathy scale was employed to assess perceived empathy., Results: We included 1133 PwMS (age, 45.26 ± 11.50 years; females, 68.49%). ChatGPT's responses showed significantly higher empathy scores (Coeff = 1.38; 95% CI = 0.65, 2.11; p > z < 0.01), when compared with neurologists' responses. No association was found between ChatGPT' responses and mean satisfaction (Coeff = 0.03; 95% CI = - 0.01, 0.07; p = 0.157). College graduate, when compared with high school education responder, had significantly lower likelihood to prefer ChatGPT response (IRR = 0.87; 95% CI = 0.79, 0.95; p < 0.01)., Conclusions: ChatGPT-authored responses provided higher empathy than neurologists. Although AI holds potential, physicians should prepare to interact with increasingly digitized patients and guide them on responsible AI use. Future development should consider tailoring AIs' responses to individual characteristics. Within the progressive digitalization of the population, ChatGPT could emerge as a helpful support in healthcare management rather than an alternative., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Wearing a facemask remains a pivotal strategy to prevent severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection even after vaccination, but one of the possible costs of this protection is that it may interfere with the ability to read emotion in facial expressions. We explored the extent to which it may be more difficult for participants to read emotions in faces when faces are covered with masks than when they are not, and whether participants' empathy, attachment style, and patient-centred orientation would affect their performance. Medical and nursing students ( N  = 429) were administered either a masked or unmasked set of 24 adult faces depicting anger, sadness, fear, or happiness. Participants also completed self-report measures of empathy, patient-centredness, and attachment style. As predicted, participants made more errors to the masked than the unmasked faces with the exception of the identification of fear. Of note, when participants missed happiness, they were most likely to see it as sadness, and when they missed anger, they were most likely to see it as happiness. A multiple linear regression analysis showed that more errors identifying emotions in faces was associated with faces being masked as opposed to unmasked, lower scores on the empathy fantasy scale, and higher scores on the fearful attachment style. The findings suggest that wearing facemasks is associated with a variety of negative outcomes that might interfere with the building of positive relationships between health care workers and patients. Those who teach student health care workers would benefit from bringing this finding into their curriculum and training., Competing Interests: Declaration of conflicting interestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Affective empathy enables social mammals to learn and transfer emotion to conspecifics, but an understanding of the neural circuitry and genetics underlying affective empathy is still very limited. Here, using the naive observational fear between cagemates as a paradigm similar to human affective empathy and chemo/optogenetic neuroactivity manipulation in mouse brain, we investigate the roles of multiple brain regions in mouse affective empathy. Remarkably, two neural circuits originating from the ventral hippocampus, previously unknown to function in empathy, are revealed to regulate naive observational fear. One is from ventral hippocampal pyramidal neurons to lateral septum GABAergic neurons, and the other is from ventral hippocampus pyramidal neurons to nucleus accumbens dopamine-receptor-expressing neurons. Furthermore, we identify the naive observational-fear-encoding neurons in the ventral hippocampus. Our findings highlight the potentially diverse regulatory pathways of empathy in social animals, shedding light on the mechanisms underlying empathy circuity and its disorders., Competing Interests: Declaration of interests The authors declare no competing interests., (Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Empathy enables understanding and sharing of others' feelings. Human neuroimaging studies have identified critical brain regions supporting empathy for pain, including the anterior insula (AI), anterior cingulate (ACC), amygdala, and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). However, to date, the precise spatio-temporal profiles of empathic neural responses and inter-regional communications remain elusive. Here, using intracranial electroencephalography, we investigated electrophysiological signatures of vicarious pain perception. Others' pain perception induced early increases in high-gamma activity in IFG, beta power increases in ACC, but decreased beta power in AI and amygdala. Vicarious pain perception also altered the beta-band-coordinated coupling between ACC, AI, and amygdala, as well as increased modulation of IFG high-gamma amplitudes by beta phases of amygdala/AI/ACC. We identified a necessary combination of neural features for decoding vicarious pain perception. These spatio-temporally specific regional activities and inter-regional interactions within the empathy network suggest a neurodynamic model of human pain empathy., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Background: Unique interpersonal synchrony occurs during every social interaction, and is shaped by characteristics of participating individuals in these social contexts. Additionally, depending on context demands, interpersonal synchrony is also altered. The study therefore aims to investigate culture, sex, and social context effects simultaneously in a novel role-play paradigm. Additionally, the effect of personality traits on synchrony was investigated across cultures, and a further exploratory analysis on the effects of these variables on pre- and post-session empathy changes was conducted., Methods: 83 dyads were recruited in two waves from Singapore and Italy and took part in a within-subjects session where they interacted with each other as themselves (Naturalistic Conversation) and as others (Role-Play and Role Reversal). Big Five Inventory (administered pre-session) and Interpersonal Reactivity Index (administered pre- and post-session) were used as measures of personality and empathy respectively, while synchrony was measured using hyperscanning functional near-infrared spectroscopy in the prefrontal cortex. After data-preprocessing and preliminary analyses, a mixture of multiple linear regression and exploratory forward stepwise regression models were used to address the above study aims., Results: Results revealed significant main and interaction effects of culture, sex and social context on brain-to-brain synchrony, particularly in the medial left cluster of the prefrontal cortex, and a unique contribution of extraversion and openness to experience to synchrony in the Italian cohort only. Finally, culture-driven differences in empathy changes were identified, where significant increases in empathy across sessions were generally only observed within the Singaporean cohort., Conclusions: Main findings indicate lowered brain-to-brain synchrony during role-playing activities that is moderated by the dyad's sex make-up and culture, implying differential processing of social interactions that is also influenced by individuals' background factors. Findings align with current literature that role-playing is a cognitively demanding activity requiring greater levels of self-regulation and suppression of self-related cognition as opposed to interpersonal co-regulation characterized by synchrony. However, the current pattern of results would be better supported by future studies investigating multimodal synchronies and corroboration., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Humans need social closeness to prosper. There is evidence that empathy can induce social closeness. However, it remains unclear how empathy-related social closeness is formed and how stable it is as time passes. We applied an acquisition-extinction paradigm combined with computational modeling and fMRI, to investigate the formation and stability of empathy-related social closeness. Female participants observed painful stimulation of another person with high probability (acquisition) and low probability (extinction) and rated their closeness to that person. The results of two independent studies showed increased social closeness in the acquisition block that resisted extinction in the extinction block. Providing insights into underlying mechanisms, reinforcement learning modeling revealed that the formation of social closeness is based on a learning signal (prediction error) generated from observing another's pain, whereas maintaining social closeness is based on a learning signal generated from observing another's pain relief. The results of a reciprocity control study indicate that this feedback recalibration is specific to learning of empathy-related social closeness. On the neural level, the recalibration of the feedback signal was associated with neural responses in anterior insula and adjacent inferior frontal gyrus and the bilateral superior temporal sulcus/temporoparietal junction. Together, these findings show that empathy-related social closeness generated in bad times, that is, empathy with the misfortune of another person, transfers to good times and thus may form one important basis for stable social relationships., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing financial interests., (Copyright © 2024 the authors.)

Humanoid robots have been designed to look more and more like humans to meet social demands. How do people empathize humanoid robots who look the same as but are essentially different from humans? We addressed this issue by examining subjective feelings, electrophysiological activities, and functional magnetic resonance imaging signals during perception of pain and neutral expressions of faces that were recognized as patients or humanoid robots. We found that healthy adults reported deceased feelings of understanding and sharing of humanoid robots' compared to patients' pain. Moreover, humanoid robot (vs. patient) identities reduced long-latency electrophysiological responses and blood oxygenation level-dependent signals in the left temporoparietal junction in response to pain (vs. neutral) expressions. Furthermore, we showed evidence that humanoid robot identities inhibited a causal input from the right ventral lateral prefrontal cortex to the left temporoparietal junction, contrasting the opposite effect produced by patient identities. These results suggest a neural model of modulations of empathy by humanoid robot identity through interactions between the cognitive and affective empathy networks, which provides a neurocognitive basis for understanding human-robot interactions., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

The experience of empathy for pain is underpinned by sensorimotor and affective dimensions which, although interconnected, are at least in part behaviorally and neurally distinct. Spinal cord injuries (SCI) induce a massive, below-lesion level, sensorimotor body-brain disconnection. This condition may make it possible to test whether sensorimotor deprivation alters specific dimensions of empathic reactivity to observed pain. To explore this issue, we asked SCI people with paraplegia and healthy controls to observe videos of painful or neutral stimuli administered to a hand (intact) or a foot (deafferented). The stimuli were displayed by means of a virtual reality set-up and seen from a first person (1PP) or third person (3PP) visual perspective. A number of measures were recorded ranging from explicit behaviors like explicit verbal reports on the videos, to implicit measures of muscular activity (like EMG from the corrugator and zygomatic muscles that may represent a proxy of sensorimotor empathy) and of autonomic reactivity (like the electrodermal response and Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia that may represent a general proxy of affective empathy). While no across group differences in explicit verbal reports about the pain stimuli were found, SCI people exhibited reduced facial muscle reactivity to the stimuli applied to the foot (but not the hand) seen from the 1PP. Tellingly, the corrugator activity correlated with SCI participants' neuropathic pain. There were no across group differences in autonomic reactivity suggesting that SCI lesions may affect sensorimotor dimensions connected to empathy for pain., (© 2024 Society for Psychophysiological Research.)

In mammals, including humans, affective touch (AT) supports the establishment and maintenance of social connections and mitigates the effects of social conflict and ostracism. AT is used to describe slowly moving, low-forced mechanical stimulation that is frequently perceived as pleasant. In humans, AT has been addressed particularly for its role in promoting bonding and emotional regulation during early development; however, more recent studies have suggested that AT also preserves physical and emotional well-being in adulthood. Here, we investigated whether AT can buffer adults' experience of negative emotions as reflected in their behavioral and physiological responses to emotionally arousing stimuli. Participants were stimulated on their forearms using AT or tapping (T) while they viewed a series of emotionally arousing and neutral images, and we measured their skin conductance response and their explicit rating of the images' unpleasantness. We found that AT, but not T, reduced the arousal and perceived unpleasantness of the emotional stimuli but not the neutral ones, revealing the soothing role of AT in emotional contexts. The second aim of the study was to explore the possibility that AT might benefit some individuals more than others, according to their individual differences. To this aim, we assessed individuals' empathy and sensory processing sensitivity, as well as their perception of AT itself. Results revealed that while empathy did not predict changes in emotional processing irrespective of tactile stimulation, individuals with higher sensitivity reported AT as less pleasant. We discuss the possible factors mediating the observed interindividual variability in AT perception. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

This study investigated the relationship between psychopathy, as assessed by the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy (LSRP) scale, and cerebral laterality. EEG recordings from frontal cortex (L3 and L4) were taken during both resting conditions and while viewing a video of an emergency field amputation, used as an empathic challenge. The ratio of alpha power from the two recording site was taken as an index of relative activity in the two hemispheres. Eighty three students from the University subject pool were recruited as participants. Male participants had a significantly higher mean LSRP score than did female participants. While LSRP scores were unrelated to cerebral laterality under resting conditions, there was both a significant linear and quadratic negative relationship between LSRP scores and relative left-hemisphere alpha activity. As alpha activity has been reported to be inversely related to brain or mental activity, a negative relationship can be inferred between LSRP scores and right hemisphere neural activity. The female participants had a much stronger quadratic relationship than did the combined sample, while the male sample showed only weak, non-significant relationships. Our data suggest that the relationship between psychopathy and cerebral laterality may be sexually dimorphic., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)