TY - JOUR
T1 - Visual similarity and psychological closeness are neurally dissociable in the brain response to vicarious pain
AU - Ionta, Silvio
AU - Costantini, Marcello
AU - Ferretti, Antonio
AU - Galati, Gaspare
AU - Romani, Gian Luca
AU - Aglioti, Salvatore M.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (PRIN, Progetti di Ricerca di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale, 2015, Prot. 20159CZFJK , to Salvatore Aglioti) and the Swiss National Science Foundation through the Professeurs Boursiers funding program (grant PZ00P1_170506/1 to Silvio Ionta). All authors declare no conflict of interest.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Author(s)
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2020/12
Y1 - 2020/12
N2 - Personal and vicarious experience of pain activate partially overlapping brain networks. This brain activity is further modulated by low- and high-order factors, e.g., the perceived intensity of the model's pain and the model's similarity with the onlooker, respectively. We investigated which specific aspect of similarity modulates such empathic reactivity, focusing on the potential differentiation between visual similarity and psychological closeness between the onlooker and different types of models. To this aim, we recorded fMRI data in neurotypical participants who observed painful and tactile stimuli delivered to an adult human hand, a baby human hand, a puppy dog paw, and an anthropomorphic robotic hand. The interaction between type of vicarious experience (pain, touch) and nature of model (adult, baby, dog, robot) showed that the right supramarginal gyrus (rSMG) was selectively active for visual similarity (more active during vicarious pain for the adult and baby models), while the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) was more sensitive to psychological closeness (specifically linked to vicarious pain for the baby model). These findings indicate that visual similarity and psychological closeness between onlooker and model differentially affect the activity of brain regions specifically implied in encoding interindividual sharing of sensorimotor and affective aspects of vicarious pain, respectively.
AB - Personal and vicarious experience of pain activate partially overlapping brain networks. This brain activity is further modulated by low- and high-order factors, e.g., the perceived intensity of the model's pain and the model's similarity with the onlooker, respectively. We investigated which specific aspect of similarity modulates such empathic reactivity, focusing on the potential differentiation between visual similarity and psychological closeness between the onlooker and different types of models. To this aim, we recorded fMRI data in neurotypical participants who observed painful and tactile stimuli delivered to an adult human hand, a baby human hand, a puppy dog paw, and an anthropomorphic robotic hand. The interaction between type of vicarious experience (pain, touch) and nature of model (adult, baby, dog, robot) showed that the right supramarginal gyrus (rSMG) was selectively active for visual similarity (more active during vicarious pain for the adult and baby models), while the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) was more sensitive to psychological closeness (specifically linked to vicarious pain for the baby model). These findings indicate that visual similarity and psychological closeness between onlooker and model differentially affect the activity of brain regions specifically implied in encoding interindividual sharing of sensorimotor and affective aspects of vicarious pain, respectively.
KW - Affective
KW - Empathy
KW - fMRI
KW - Pain
KW - Sensorimotor
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U2 - 10.1016/j.cortex.2020.09.028
DO - 10.1016/j.cortex.2020.09.028
M3 - Article
C2 - 33160159
AN - SCOPUS:85096170636
VL - 133
SP - 295
EP - 308
JO - Cortex
JF - Cortex
SN - 0010-9452
ER -