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Visuospatial Memory and Socioemotional Processes: Perspective-Taking Across Domains
Abstract
This study examined the relationship between visuospatial memory strategies (egocentric and allocentric) and empathy styles (cognitive and affective). Positive correlations were hypothesized between egocentric strategies and cognitive empathy, as well as between allocentric strategies and affective empathy. Participants completed a virtual visuospatial memory task under egocentric and allocentric conditions. Self-report questionnaires examined strategy use during the task and daily life visuospatial habits (trait characteristics) in addition to questionnaires evaluating the cognitive and affective components of empathy. The findings revealed that visuospatial task performance was not associated with reported strategy use or visuospatial trait characteristics. Furthermore, these variables did not yield meaningful results when correlated with affective and cognitive empathy constructs. Interestingly, egocentric visuospatial trait significantly and positively predicted overall empathy, yielding large effect sizes, while allocentric visuospatial trait and strategy use were negative predictors, revealing small-medium effect sizes. These results suggest that egocentrically inclined individuals necessitate more self-other processes while allocentric individuals may rely on additional cues. Future designs to evaluate these findings in more depth are discussed in detail.
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This study explores how people represent spatial information in order to accomplish a visuo-motor task. To this aim we combined two fundamental components of the human visuo-spatial system: egocentric and allocentric frames of reference and coordinate and categorical spatial relations. Specifically, participants learned the position of three objects and then had to judge the distance (coordinate information) and the relation (categorical information) of a target object with respect to themselves (egocentric frame) or with respect to another object (allocentric frame). They gave spatial judgments by reaching and touching the exact position or the side previously occupied by the target object. The possible influence of stimuli characteristics (3D objects vs. 2D images) and delay between learning phase and testing phase (1.5 vs. 5sec) was also assessed. Results showed an advantage of egocentric coordinate judgments over the allocentric coordinate ones independently from the kind of stimuli used and the temporal parameters of the response, whereas egocentric categorical judgments were more accurate than allocentric categorical ones only with 3D stimuli and when an immediate response was requested. This pattern of data is discussed in the light of the "perception-action" model by Milner and Goodale (Milner AD, Goodale MA. The visual brain in action. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 1995) and of neuroimaging evidence about frames of reference and spatial relations.
Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier B.V.
This study investigated differences between individuals with survey and landmark-centred spatial representations in different visuo-spatial tasks and in two way-finding tasks. The Mental Rotation Test (MRT; Vanderberg & Kuse, 1978), and the Minnesota Paper Form Board Test (MPFB; Likert & Quasha, 1941) were administered to two groups of high-survey and landmark-centred undergraduate students. The groups also performed two way-finding tasks where they were required to study the route they were going to take, in one case with a map and in the other with a verbal description. Differences between the two groups emerged; high-survey individuals performed the MRT better than the landmark-centred ones. In the way-finding task an interaction, instruction by group, was found, supporting the idea that the two groups are influenced differently by the format (map or verbal description) of instructions. The landmark-centred group made fewer errors than the high-survey group with the verbal descriptions.
Aging may have an impact on the CA3 autoassociative network of the hippocampus, posited by computational models as supporting pattern completion. Twenty-five young (YAs) and 25 older adults (OAs) performed a spatial pattern completion task using a computerized navigational paradigm analogous to a rodent pattern completion task reliant on the CA3. Participants identified a previously seen goal location, and the availability of distal cues in the environment was manipulated such that 0, 2, or 4 cues were missing. Performance in both groups declined as a function of decreased cue availability. However, controlling for age differences in task performance during a pre-experimental baseline task, OAs performed equivalently to YAs when all cues were available, but worse than YAs as the number of cues decreased. These findings suggest spatial pattern completion may be impaired in OAs. We discuss these findings in the context of a growing body of literature suggesting age-related imbalances in pattern separation vs. pattern completion.
This study was designed to analyze some performance factors as a possible source of sex-related bias in psychometric tests
of visuospatial aptitude. Goldstein, Haldane, and Mitchell (1990) explored the effect of two response styles—slowness of performance
and reluctance to guess—by using a 3-D mental rotation test (the task showing the largest cognitive sex difference) and found
that time limits and raw scores contributed substantially to the male advantage. We applied two tests in thespeed-power continuum to a representative sample of 621 males and 821 females in their last year of high school in a 2 × 2 (gender ×
time) full factorial design. Reluctance to guess was similar for males and females. Males obtained more correct responses
on both tests, and for both time conditions, than did females. These results are not only statistically significant but also
are of substantial practical consequence.
Describes the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) and its relationships with measures of social functioning, self-esteem, emotionality, and sensitivity to others. 677 male and 667 female undergraduates served as Ss. Each of the 4 IRI subscales displayed a distinctive and predictable pattern of relationships with these measures, as well as with previous unidimensional empathy measures. Findings provide evidence for a multidimensional approach to empathy. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).
Affective empathy (AE) is distinguished clinically and neurally from cognitive empathy (CE). While AE is selectively disrupted in psychopathy, autism is associated with deficits in CE. Despite such dissociations, AE and CE together contribute to normal human empathic experience. A dimensional measure of individual differences in AE 'relative to' CE captures this interaction and may reveal brain-behavior relationships beyond those detectable with AE and CE separately. Using resting-state fMRI and measures of empathy in healthy adults, we show that relative empathic ability (REA) is reflected in the brain's intrinsic functional dynamics. Dominance of AE was associated with stronger functional connectivity among social-emotional regions (ventral anterior insula, orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala, perigenual anterior cingulate). Dominance of CE was related to stronger connectivity among areas implicated in interoception, autonomic monitoring and social-cognitive processing (brainstem, superior temporal sulcus, ventral anterior insula). These patterns were distinct from those observed with AE and CE separately. Finally, REA and the strength of several functional connections were associated with symptoms of psychopathology. These findings suggest that REA provides a dimensional index of empathic function and pathological tendencies in healthy adults, which are reflected in the intrinsic functional dynamics of neural systems associated with social and emotional cognition.
Neurocognitive assessment in individuals with intellectual disabilities requires a well-validated test battery. To meet this need, the Arizona Cognitive Test Battery (ACTB) has been developed specifically to assess the cognitive phenotype in Down syndrome (DS). The ACTB includes neuropsychological assessments chosen to 1) assess a range of skills, 2) be non-verbal so as to not confound the neuropsychological assessment with language demands, 3) have distributional properties appropriate for research studies to identify genetic modifiers of variation, 4) show sensitivity to within and between sample differences, 5) have specific correlates with brain function, and 6) be applicable to a wide age range and across contexts. The ACTB includes tests of general cognitive ability and prefrontal, hippocampal and cerebellar function. These tasks were drawn from the Cambridge Neuropsychological Testing Automated Battery (CANTAB) and other established paradigms. Alongside the cognitive testing battery we administered benchmark and parent-report assessments of cognition and behavior. Individuals with DS (n=74, ages 7-38 years) and mental age (MA) matched controls (n=50, ages 3-8 years) were tested across 3 sites. A subsample of these groups were used for between-group comparisons, including 55 individuals with DS and 36 mental age matched controls. The ACTB allows for low floor performance levels and participant loss. Floor effects were greater in younger children. Individuals with DS were impaired on a number ACTB tests in comparison to a MA-matched sample, with some areas of spared ability, particularly on tests requiring extensive motor coordination. Battery measures correlated with parent report of behavior and development. The ACTB provided consistent results across contexts, including home vs. lab visits, cross-site, and among individuals with a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds and differences in ethnicity. The ACTB will be useful in a range of outcome studies, including clinical trials and the identification of important genetic components of cognitive disability.
Several neuroimaging studies have consistently shown activations of areas surrounding the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) during tasks exploring the sense of agency. Beyond TPJ, activations in different structures, such as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dLPFC), the pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA), the insula and the precuneus have been reported. Moreover, a possible dissociation between self- and external-agency attribution has been suggested. To test the hypothesis of distinct neural correlates for self- and external-agency attribution a quantitative meta-analysis, based on activation likelihood estimation (ALE) method, across 15 PET and fMRI studies (228 subjects) was conducted. Results show converging activations including the TPJ, pre-SMA, precuneus and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dMPFC) in external-agency, while insula activation was related to self-agency. We discuss these findings, highlighting the role of the insula, and calling for the use of alternative paradigms such as intentional binding and interactive imitation to study agency.
Empathy has been inconsistently defined and inadequately measured. This research aimed to produce a new and rigorously developed questionnaire. Exploratory (n₁ = 640) and confirmatory (n₂ = 318) factor analyses were employed to develop the Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy (QCAE). Principal components analysis revealed 5 factors (31 items). Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed this structure in an independent sample. The hypothesized 2-factor structure (cognitive and affective empathy) was tested and provided the best and most parsimonious fit to the data. Gender differences, convergent validity, and construct validity were examined. The QCAE is a valid tool for assessing cognitive and affective empathy.
Empathy and sympathy play crucial roles in much of human social interaction and are necessary components for healthy coexistence. Sympathy is thought to be a proxy for motivating prosocial behavior and providing the affective and motivational base for moral development. The purpose of the present study was to use functional MRI to characterize developmental changes in brain activation in the neural circuits underpinning empathy and sympathy. Fifty-seven individuals, whose age ranged from 7 to 40 years old, were presented with short animated visual stimuli depicting painful and non-painful situations. These situations involved either a person whose pain was accidentally caused or a person whose pain was intentionally inflicted by another individual to elicit empathic (feeling as the other) or sympathetic (feeling concern for the other) emotions, respectively. Results demonstrate monotonic age-related changes in the amygdala, supplementary motor area, and posterior insula when participants were exposed to painful situations that were accidentally caused. When participants observed painful situations intentionally inflicted by another individual, age-related changes were detected in the dorsolateral prefrontal and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, with a gradual shift in that latter region from its medial to its lateral portion. This pattern of activation reflects a change from a visceral emotional response critical for the analysis of the affective significance of stimuli to a more evaluative function. Further, these data provide evidence for partially distinct neural mechanisms subserving empathy and sympathy, and demonstrate the usefulness of a developmental neurobiological approach to the new emerging area of moral neuroscience.
Numerous studies have shown that sex differences in visuospatial tasks vary in size and direction depending on the nature of the task, with large differences favoring males on tasks that require transformations in visuospatial working memory. The cognitive processes underlying these differences were investigated using laboratory tasks developed by Dror and Kosslyn (1994). Four cognitive components of visuospatial working memory were assessed--image generation, maintenance, scanning, and transformation--in an attempt to identify the components that would show differential effects for females and males. The image generation task required retrieval of shape information from long-term memory, generation of a visual image in working memory, and utilization of the information about the shape in a decision task. The image maintenance task required only the latter two processes. The information processing demands required by scanning and rotation tasks came from the need to transform the visual image so that it could be used in decision making. Males responded more quickly on all four tasks (ds between .63 and .77), with no between-sex differences in accuracy. We concluded that speed of processing is central to understanding sex differences in visuospatial working memory. We discuss implications of these findings for performance on real-world visuospatial tasks.
Discusses empirical guidelines for interpreting the magnitude of correlation coefficients, a key index of effect size, in psychological studies. The author uses the work of J. Cohen (see record 1987-98267-000), in which operational definitions were offered for interpreting correlation coefficients, and examines two meta-analytic reviews (G. J. Meyer et al., see record 2001-00159-003; and M. W. Lipsey et al., see record 1994-18340-001) to arrive at the empirical guidelines. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Several strategies can be used to find a destination in the environment. Using a virtual environment, the authors identified 2 strategies dependent on 2 different memory systems. A spatial strategy involved the use of multiple landmarks available in the environment, and a response strategy involved right and left turns from a given start position. Although a probe trial provided an objective measure of the strategy used, classification that was based on verbal reports was used in small groups to avoid risks of misclassification. The authors first demonstrated that the spatial strategy led to a significant activity of the hippocampus, whereas the response strategy led to a sustained activity in the caudate nucleus. Then, the authors administered the task to 15 patients with lesions to the medial temporal lobe, showing an impaired ability using the spatial strategy. Imaging and neuropsychological results are discussed to shed light on the human navigation system.
Young healthy participants spontaneously use different strategies in a virtual radial maze, an adaptation of a task typically used with rodents. Functional magnetic resonance imaging confirmed previously that people who used spatial memory strategies showed increased activity in the hippocampus, whereas response strategies were associated with activity in the caudate nucleus. Here, voxel based morphometry was used to identify brain regions covarying with the navigational strategies used by individuals. Results showed that spatial learners had significantly more gray matter in the hippocampus and less gray matter in the caudate nucleus compared with response learners. Furthermore, the gray matter in the hippocampus was negatively correlated to the gray matter in the caudate nucleus, suggesting a competitive interaction between these two brain areas. In a second analysis, the gray matter of regions known to be anatomically connected to the hippocampus, such as the amygdala, parahippocampal, perirhinal, entorhinal and orbitofrontal cortices were shown to covary with gray matter in the hippocampus. Because low gray matter in the hippocampus is a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease, these results have important implications for intervention programs that aim at functional recovery in these brain areas. In addition, these data suggest that spatial strategies may provide protective effects against degeneration of the hippocampus that occurs with normal aging.
This study assesses the role of the human medial temporal lobe (MTL) structures in the coordination of spatial information across perspective change and, in particular, in visual perspective taking--namely the capacity to know what another individual is seeing on the visual scene. Fourteen patients with unilateral temporal lobe resection and 21 control subjects performed two tasks, called 'object location memory' and 'viewpoint recognition', respectively. In the object location memory task, subjects had to memorize the position of a target object in the environment from an initial viewpoint. They were then shown the same environment from a new viewpoint and had to indicate whether or not the target object had moved. In the viewpoint recognition task, subjects had to imagine the perspective of an avatar from the initial viewpoint and then decide whether or not the new viewpoint was that of the avatar. The results showed a double dissociation, with left MTL patients being impaired in the object location memory task but not in the viewpoint recognition task and right MTL patients being impaired in the viewpoint recognition task but not in the object location memory task. Furthermore, based on multiple regression analyses between performance and the volumes of the different MTL structures, we discuss the specific involvement of the left temporopolar cortex and of the right hippocampus in different kinds of visual perspective taking.
Previous studies have reported that sex differences exist in mental rotation (MR) through different activated cortical regions, but it remains unclear what could be possible reasons of such differences in the different processing stages of MR. A few Event related potential (ERP) studies have noticed that sex differences occur in relatively early cognitive processing stages, but none of the study has viewed directional flow of information in the earlier stages as a function of complexity in men and women. This study investigated possible reasons for sex differences in visuospatial performance by flux of information underlying cortical functional connectivity. In the present study, earlier two stages were identified as a) perceptual encoding, identification, and discrimination of objects, kept under visuospatial attention allocation network (VSAN) and b) rotation ability involving spatial transformation strategy, assigned in mental rotation network (MRN). Participants underwent 3D mental rotation task with varying difficulty levels, simultaneously having electroencephalogram (EEG). It has been confirmed in behavioural outcome, as angular disparity increases, reaction and accuracy trades off. There were different activated electrodes in male and female participants for both networks. Advantage of spatial working memory was evident in men and reflected during performance. Also, VSAN showed that men utilised bottom-up attentional processes for more rotated views. MRN exhibited hemispheric lateralisation in the parietal cortex; men showed higher activation in right parietal cortex. This research work offers promising perspective to the study of cortical functional connectivity, in the terms of strength and direction, during sub-processes of MR.
To facilitate a multidimensional approach to empathy the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) includes 4 subscales: Perspective-Taking (PT) Fantasy (FS) Empathic Concern (EC) and Personal Distress (PD). The aim of the present study was to establish the convergent and discriminant validity of these 4 subscales. Hypothesized relationships among the IRI subscales between the subscales and measures of other psychological constructs (social functioning self-esteem emotionality and sensitivity to others) and between the subscales and extant empathy measures were examined. Study subjects included 677 male and 667 female students enrolled in undergraduate psychology classes at the University of Texas. The IRI scales not only exhibited the predicted relationships among themselves but also were related in the expected manner to other measures. Higher PT scores were consistently associated with better social functioning and higher self-esteem; in contrast Fantasy scores were unrelated to these 2 characteristics. High EC scores were positively associated with shyness and anxiety but negatively linked to egotism. The most substantial relationships in the study involved the PD scale. PD scores were strongly linked with low self-esteem and poor interpersonal functioning as well as a constellation of vulnerability uncertainty and fearfulness. These findings support a multidimensional approach to empathy by providing evidence that the 4 qualities tapped by the IRI are indeed separate constructs each related in specific ways to other psychological measures.
Successful social interaction requires knowledge about another person's emotional states, represented in an affective Theory of Mind (ToM). This information can be acquired either directly or indirectly, i.e. by observing emotional facial expressions (EFE) or indirectly by inferring emotions through cognitive perspective taking. Therefore, it is of great interest how the function of the cortical ToM-network and the limbic system in affective ToM depends on the presence of facial expressions. We addressed this question in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study. The experimental paradigm applied a well-established ToM cartoon task to test functional effects of EFE on the activation of the amygdala and the anterior ToM-network during affective ToM-judgments. During the task 22 healthy participants had to judge the changes of the emotional state of the stories protagonist in the presence or absence of EFE. After quality control 21 datasets entered the final analyses. The presence of EFE during affective ToM-judgments was associated with shorter reaction times as well as increased activation of the right amygdala, most probably located in the basolateral nucleus (BLA), coincident with reduced activation of ToM related regions of the prefrontal cortex. Psychophysiological interactions (PPI) revealed EFE-dependent modulation of connectivity between the right BLA and contralateral ToM-network regions. In combination the functional interaction of EFE and affective ToM in the right amygdala, our data suggest a complementary but parallel organization of EFE processing and affective ToM. In this framework, the amygdala seems to act as an EFE detector when affective ToM-judgments are demanded. Additionally, the facts that EFE induced exclusively right-sided amygdala activation and modulated the connectivity with the contralateral ToM-network support the idea of a functional lateralization of stimulus driven components of affective ToM.
The present study examined how people's spatial abilities and spatial preferences for representing environmental information influence the ways in which they represent information from spatial descriptions. Spatial individual differences can have a central role in sustaining the mental representation deriving from survey and route descriptions. A group of 48 undergraduates listened to survey and route spatial descriptions and performed a sentence verification task on their content. They were then administered two spatial tasks, the Mental Rotation Test (MRT) and the Minnesota Paper Form Board (MPFB), plus a self-rating scale on sense of direction and spatial representation. The results showed that spatial abilities influenced the recall of survey and route texts differently. The MPFB and the MRT positively predicted the accuracy of answers on the survey text, which was negatively predicted by a preference for a route representation. Preference for a survey representation was positively associated with the accuracy of answers on the route text. Taken together, these results support the existence of a relationship between spatial abilities, spatial styles, and the processing of spatial language that depends on whether a route or a survey perspective is adopted.
The positive effect of perspective taking on favorable attitudes towards stigmatized individuals and outgroups is well established (Batson et al., 1997). We draw on the ingroup projection model (Mummendey & Wenzel, 1999) to better understand the processes underlying this effect. Based on their egocentric perspective, ingroup and outgroup members have different representations of the super-ordinate group (perspective divergence) so that the ingroup is perceived as more relatively prototypical of the superordinate group, leading to negative outgroup evaluation. We hypothesize that the positive effect of perspective taking on outgroup attitudes is due to a reduction of relative ingroup prototypicality. Across three studies with different manipulations of perspective taking, we found that participants who were taking the perspective of an outgroup member evaluated the outgroup more positively and were less inclined to perceive their ingroup as more relatively prototypical. The effect of perspective taking on outgroup attitudes was mediated by relative ingroup prototypicality.
Spatial pattern association (SPA), separation (SPS), and completion (SPC) have been shown to be dependent on distinct subfields of the hippocampus in rodents, but these processes have not been assessed using analogous paradigms in humans. In this thesis I developed three computerized tasks analogous to well-established rodent tasks used to assess these processes. Participants showed improved performance across trials in the SPA task, indicating increasing familiarity with the environment. Participants showed performance differences that were dependent on the amount of demand on the subprocesses used in SPS and SPC, specifically, poorer performance with decreasing separation distance between target and foil in the SPS task, and poorer performance with decreasing number of wall cues in the SPC task. These results support sensitivity of the tasks to these subprocesses in humans. These tasks set the stage for valuable future directions including the use of these tasks with imaging and clinical populations.
Remembering object locations across different views is a fundamental competence for keeping oriented in large-scale space. Here we investigated such ability by comparing encoding and retrieval of locations across viewpoint changes relative to different spatial frames of reference. We acquired functional magnetic resonance images while subjects detected target displacements across consecutive views of a familiar virtual room, reporting changes in the target absolute position in the room (stable environmental frame), changes in its position relative to a set of movable objects (unstable object-based frame), and changes relative to their point of view (control viewer-centered frame). Behavioral costs were higher for the stable environmental frame, and a cortical network including the lingual/parahippocampal gyrus (LPHG) and the retrosplenial complex (RSC) selectively encoded spatial locations relative to this frame. Several regions, including the dorsal fronto-parietal cortex and the LPHG, were modulated by the amount of experienced viewpoint change, but only the RSC was selectively modulated by the amount of viewpoint change relative to the environmental frame, thus showing a special role in coding one's own position and heading in familiar environments.
Four studies explored whether perspective-taking and empathy would be differentially effective in mixed-motive competitions depending on whether the critical skills for success were more cognitively or emotionally based. Study 1 demonstrated that individual differences in perspective-taking, but not empathy, predicted increased distributive and integrative performance in a multiple-round war game that required a clear understanding of an opponent's strategic intentions. Conversely, both measures and manipulations of empathy proved more advantageous than perspective-taking in a relationship-based coalition game that required identifying the strength of interpersonal connections (Studies 2-3). Study 4 established a key process: perspective-takers were more accurate in cognitive understanding of others, whereas empathy produced stronger accuracy in emotional understanding. Perspective-taking and empathy were each useful but in different types of competitive, mixed-motive situations-their success depended on the task-competency match. These results demonstrate when to use your head versus your heart to achieve the best outcomes for oneself.
Poor mentalizing in some patients with schizophrenia has been attributed to disruption of a cognitive module dedicated to computing meta-representations (representations of beliefs about propositions) and linked specifically to paranoia. Because meta-representational capacity is needed to infer beliefs but is not needed to judge visual perspectives, this view predicts that patients with selective mentalizing deficits will show intact visual perspective-taking. This study tested that prediction by investigating visual perspective-taking in 32 patients (aged 19–60 yrs) and 24 healthy controls (aged 20–57 yrs), known to differ in mentalizing ability. Item questions (asking locations of array-features) and appearance questions (asking how an array appears from another perspective) were presented with both viewer-rotation instructions (asking subjects to imagine moving themselves relative to an array) and array-rotation instructions (asking subjects to imagine rotating an array relative to their fixed viewpoint). Results show that whereas patients performed as well as controls on item questions and appearance questions under array-rotation instructions, patients made more egocentric errors than controls judging appearance questions under viewer-rotation instructions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Empathy is thought to play a key role in motivating prosocial behavior, guiding our preferences and behavioral responses, and providing the affective and motivational base for moral development. While these abilities have traditionally been examined using behavioral methods, recent work in evolutionary biology, developmental and cognitive neuroscience has begun to shed light on the neural circuitry that instantiate them. The purpose of this article is to critically examine the current knowledge in the field of affective neuroscience and provide an integrative and comprehensive view of the computational mechanisms that underlie empathy. This framework is of general interest and relevance for theory as well as for assisting future research in the domains of affective developmental neuroscience and psychopathology.
Three experiments showed that, in virtual space, humans learn to find an invisible target that remains in a fixed location relative to distal cues. Experiment 1 showed that people rapidly learned to locate an invisible target in a computer-generated virtual arena. Participants searched the appropriate place intensely when, on a probe trial, the target was removed. Experiment 2 showed that two groups of participants, one with a visible and one with an invisible target, learned to locate the target in the virtual arena. A probe trial, during which the target was removed, showed that participants from both groups searched the former location of the target in the virtual arena, suggesting the presence of proximal cues did not interfere with place learning. Experiment 3 showed that, following place learning, people directly approach the location of the invisible target from novel start positions. The data were discussed in terms of spatial learning and memory.
Human empathy relies on the ability to share emotions as well as the ability to understand the other's thoughts, desires, and feelings. Recent evidence points to 2 separate systems for empathy: an emotional system that supports our ability to empathize emotionally and a cognitive system that involves cognitive understanding of the other's perspective. Converging evidence from neuroimaging and lesion studies shows that a neural network that includes the inferior frontal gyrus and the inferior parietal lobule is necessary for emotion recognition and emotional contagion. On the other hand, the involvement of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, temporoparietal junction, and the medial temporal lobe in self-reflection and autobiographical memory places these key regions as necessary for cognitive empathy. The proposed dissociation between these systems is supported by recent neurochemical experiments involving administration of oxytocin as well as by ethological, psychiatric, and developmental studies. Finally, although the emotional and cognitive systems appear to work independently, every empathic response may still evoke both components to some extent, depending on the social context.
Humans have a striking tendency to use past autobiographical events to understand their own behavior. However, it is unknown if we use our own memories to understand others. To assess the role of autobiographical memory in mentalizing we examined the contribution of memory structures, specifically the hippocampus, to emotional judgment of others. Subjects were scanned while making emotional judgments regarding themselves, and protagonists deemed similar to or dissimilar from themselves. Results indicated a significant correlation between rating of the self and the similar protagonists, particularly for the events subjects recalled from their past. Furthermore, we found an interaction between similarity and recollection so that only for events subjects recalled from their past, the hippocampus reacted differently for judgments regarding the self versus dissimilar others, but not for self versus similar others. These results suggest that people actually use their own repertoire of memories and project internal self knowledge while making emotional judgments regarding others. It is speculated that mentalizing is modulated by memories of similar past events and depends on the protagonist we face.
The current study examines changes over time in a commonly used measure of dispositional empathy. A cross-temporal meta-analysis was conducted on 72 samples of American college students who completed at least one of the four subscales (Empathic Concern, Perspective Taking, Fantasy, and Personal Distress) of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) between 1979 and 2009 (total N = 13,737). Overall, the authors found changes in the most prototypically empathic subscales of the IRI: Empathic Concern was most sharply dropping, followed by Perspective Taking. The IRI Fantasy and Personal Distress subscales exhibited no changes over time. Additional analyses found that the declines in Perspective Taking and Empathic Concern are relatively recent phenomena and are most pronounced in samples from after 2000.
The present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study sought to characterize neural processes related to aspects of empathy and social cognition. It has been hypothesized previously that merely observing emotions in others automatically activates associated representations of the emotional state in the observer. We tested this prediction by presenting drawings depicting either one or two persons in an emotionally charged or neutral situation. Importantly and in contrast to previous imaging studies on empathy or social cognition, we did not instruct participants to assess the depicted persons' feelings or thoughts, but told them to simply watch the pictures to be able to perform a memory task unrelated to the main experimental question. This novel design allowed us to assess automatically elicited empathy-related effects (contrasting emotional and neutral situations) and to compare them with automatic social cognitive processes (contrasting stimuli with two persons vs. one person). We observed empathy-related increased hemodynamic responses in areas previously shown to be related to emotion processing (ventromedial and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, PFC) and to social cognitive processes (superior temporal sulcus, STS, and medial PFC). The medial PFC activation was negatively correlated with participants' predisposition to feel distressed in emotional social situations, suggesting that interindividual differences in these higher-order functions might also impact empathic responses in social interactions.
The psychological construct of empathy refers to an intersubjective induction process by which positive and negative emotions are shared, without losing sight of whose feelings belong to whom. Empathy can lead to personal distress or to empathic concern (sympathy). The goal of this paper is to address the underlying cognitive processes and their neural underpinnings that constitute empathy within a developmental neuroscience perspective. In addition, we focus on how these processes go awry in developmental disorders marked by impairments in social cognition, such as autism spectrum disorder, and conduct disorder. We argue that empathy involves both bottom-up and top-down information processing, underpinned by specific and interacting neural systems. We discuss data from developmental psychology as well as cognitive neuroscience in support of such a model, and highlight the impact of neural dysfunctions on social cognitive developmental behavior. Altogether, bridging developmental science and cognitive neuroscience helps approach a more complete understanding of social cognition. Synthesizing these two domains also contributes to a better characterization of developmental psychopathologies that impacts the development of effective treatment strategies.
This study tested prefrontal and hippocampal functions in a sample of 28 school-aged (M = 14.7 years, SD = 2.7) individuals with Down syndrome (DS) compared with 28 (M = 4.9 years, SD = .75) typically developing children individually matched on mental age (MA). Both neuropsychological domains were tested with multiple behavioral measures. Benchmark measures of verbal and spatial function demonstrated that this DS sample was similar to others in the literature. The main finding was a significant Group x Domain interaction effect indicating differential hippocampal dysfunction in the group with DS. However, there was a moderate partial correlation (r = .54, controlling for chronological age) between hippocampal and prefrontal composite scores in the DS group, and both composites contributed unique variance to the prediction of MA and adaptive behavior in that group. In sum, these results indicate a particular weakness in hippocampal functions in DS in the context of overall cognitive dysfunction. It is interesting that these results are similar to what has been found in a mouse model of DS. Such a model will make it easier to understand the neurobiological mechanisms that lead to the development of hippocampal dysfunction in DS.
The present study was designed to examine the degree of impairment in cognitive and affective empathy among patients with focal brain lesions, and the contribution of specific cognitive abilities (such as cognitive flexibility and processing of emotional information), to empathy. The cognitive and affective empathic response of patients with localized prefrontal lesions (n=36) was compared to responses of patients with parietal lesions (n=15) and healthy control subjects (n=19). Results indicate that patients with prefrontal lesions (especially those with lesions involving the orbitoprefrontal and medial regions) were significantly impaired in both cognitive and affective empathy as compared to parietal patients and healthy controls. When the damage was restricted to the prefrontal cortex, either left- or right-hemisphere lesions resulted in impaired empathy. However, when the lesion involved the right hemisphere, patients with parietal lesions were also impaired. The pattern of relationships between cognitive performance and empathy suggested dissociation between the cognitive correlates of affective and cognitive empathy.
Perspective-taking is a stepping stone to human empathy. When empathizing with another individual, one can imagine how the other perceives the situation and feels as a result. To what extent does imagining the other differs from imagining oneself in similar painful situations? In this functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment, participants were shown pictures of people with their hands or feet in painful or non-painful situations and instructed to imagine and rate the level of pain perceived from different perspectives. Both the Self's and the Other's perspectives were associated with activation in the neural network involved in pain processing, including the parietal operculum, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC; BA32) and anterior insula. However, the Self-perspective yielded higher pain ratings and involved the pain matrix more extensively in the secondary somatosensory cortex, the ACC (BA 24a'/24b'), and the insula proper. Adopting the perspective of the Other was associated with specific increase in the posterior cingulate/precuneus and the right temporo-parietal junction. These results show the similarities between Self- and Other-pain representation, but most interestingly they also highlight some distinctiveness between these two representations, which is a crucial aspect of human empathy. It may be what allows us to distinguish empathic responses to others versus our own personal distress. These findings are consistent with the view that empathy does not involve a complete Self-Other merging.
We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to explore the brain mechanisms of changing point of view (PoV) in a visuospatial memory task in 3D space. Eye movements were monitored and BOLD signal changes were measured while subjects were presented with 3D images of a virtual environment. Subjects were required to encode the position of a lamp in the environment and, after changing the PoV (angular difference varied from 0 degrees to 180 degrees in 45 degrees steps), to decide whether the lamp position had been changed too or not. Performance data and a scan-path analysis based on eye movement support the use of landmarks in the environment for coding lamp position and increasing spatial updating costs with increasing changes of PoV indicating allocentric coding strategies during all conditions (0 degrees - to 180 degrees -condition). Subtraction analysis using SPM revealed that a parieto-temporo-frontal network including left medial temporal areas was activated during this 3D visuospatial task, independent of angular difference. The activity of the left parahippocampal area and the left lingual gyrus (but not the hippocampus) correlated with increasing changes of the PoV between encoding and retrieval, emphasizing their specific role in spatial scene memory and allocentric coding. The results suggest that these areas are involved in a continuous matching process between internal representations of the environment and the external status quo. In addition, hippocampal activation correlated with performance was found indicating successful recall of spatial information. Finally, in a prefrontal area comprising, the so-called "deep" frontal eye field, activation was correlated with the amount of saccadic eye movements confirming its role in oculomotor processes.
A core brain network has been proposed to underlie a number of different processes, including remembering, prospection, navigation, and theory of mind [Buckner, R. L., & Carroll, D. C. Self-projection and the brain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 49-57, 2007]. This purported network-medial prefrontal, medial-temporal, and medial and lateral parietal regions-is similar to that observed during default-mode processing and has been argued to represent self-projection [Buckner, R. L., & Carroll, D. C. Self-projection and the brain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 49-57, 2007] or scene-construction [Hassabis, D., & Maguire, E. A. Deconstructing episodic memory with construction. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 299-306, 2007]. To date, no systematic and quantitative demonstration of evidence for this common network has been presented. Using the activation likelihood estimation (ALE) approach, we conducted four separate quantitative meta-analyses of neuroimaging studies on: (a) autobiographical memory, (b) navigation, (c) theory of mind, and (d) default mode. A conjunction analysis between these domains demonstrated a high degree of correspondence. We compared these findings to a separate ALE analysis of prospection studies and found additional correspondence. Across all domains, and consistent with the proposed network, correspondence was found within the medial-temporal lobe, precuneus, posterior cingulate, retrosplenial cortex, and the temporo-parietal junction. Additionally, this study revealed that the core network extends to lateral prefrontal and occipital cortices. Autobiographical memory, prospection, theory of mind, and default mode demonstrated further reliable involvement of the medial prefrontal cortex and lateral temporal cortices. Autobiographical memory and theory of mind, previously studied as distinct, exhibited extensive functional overlap. These findings represent quantitative evidence for a core network underlying a variety of cognitive domains.
Stimulus-driven modulation of motor-evoked potentials during observation of others' pain
- A Avenati
- I M Paluello
- I Bufalari
- S M Aglioti
Avenati, A., Paluello, I. M., Bufalari, I., & Aglioti, S. M. (2006). Stimulus-driven modulation of
motor-evoked potentials during observation of others' pain. NeuroImage, 32, 316-324. doi:
10.1016/j.neuroimage.2008.09.014
A critical analysis of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index. MedEdPORTAL Directory and Repository of Educational Assessment Measures
- S H Konrath
Konrath, S. H. (2013). A critical analysis of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index. MedEdPORTAL
Directory and Repository of Educational Assessment Measures. Retrieved from:
https://www.ipearlab.org/media/publications/Konrath_2013_critical_analysis_IRI.pdf2008