Neural Correlates of Empathy for Physical and Psychological Pain

Abstract

Abstract. Empathy is known as the ability to share and understand someone else’s feelings. Previous research has either addressed the neural correlates of empathy for pain or social exclusion, but no study has examined empathy for physical and psychological (social) pain simultaneously. Forty-seven participants completed our novel “Social Interaction Empathy Task” during electroencephalogram (EEG) recording. Participants had to observe and rate the intensity of physical and psychological pain in social interactions from a first- and third-person perspective. At the behavioral level, subjects did not differentiate between the perspectives and rated physically painful scenarios as more painful than psychologically painful and neutral interactions. Psychologically painful pictures were also rated as more painful than neutral pictures. Analysis of event-related potentials (ERPs) revealed an early and a late response with a higher ERP response to physical and psychological pain compared to neutral interactions. Moreover, a significant difference emerged between the two dimensions of painful interactions. Furthermore, we found that the activity over frontal regions for discrimination of painful interactions was lateralized to the right hemisphere. Moreover, we detected significant correlations with the self-rated perspective taking ability. This suggests the psychological and physical pain qualities are processed differently but both are related to empathic traits. We further suggest that the right hemisphere may be specifically involved in the processing of empathy-related tasks.