Institute of Neuroscience, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan.
Neuroimage. 2010 Jun;51(2):923-9. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.02.047. Epub 2010 Feb 24.
Being in a close relationship is essential to human existence. Such closeness can be described as including other in the self and be underpinned on social attachment system, which evolved from a redirection of nociceptive mechanisms. To what extent does imagining a loved-one differs from imagining an unfamiliar individual being in painful situations? In this functional MRI study, participants were exposed to animated stimuli depicting hands or feet in painful and non-painful situations, and instructed to imagine these scenarios from three different perspectives: self, loved-one and stranger after being primed with their respective photographs. In line with previous studies, the three perspectives were associated with activation of the neural network involved in pain processing. Specifically, adopting the perspective of a loved-one increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and insula, whereas imagining a stranger induced a signal increase in the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) and superior frontal gyrus. The closer the participants' relationships were with their partner, the greater the deactivation in the right TPJ. A negative effective connectivity between the right TPJ and the insula, and a positive one with the superior frontal gyrus were found when participants imagined the perspective of a stranger. These results demonstrate that intimacy affects the bottom-up information processing involved in empathy, as indicated by greater overlap between neural representations of the self and the other.
人际关系对于人类的存在至关重要。这种亲密关系可以被描述为将他人纳入自我，并以社会依恋系统为基础，而社会依恋系统是从伤害性感受机制的重新定向进化而来的。想象所爱的人与想象一个陌生人身处痛苦情境在多大程度上有所不同？在这项功能性磁共振成像研究中，参与者观看了动画刺激，这些刺激描绘了手或脚处于痛苦和非痛苦的情境中，并在被各自的照片提示后，从三个不同的角度（自我、所爱的人和陌生人）想象这些场景。与之前的研究一致，这三个角度与参与疼痛处理的神经网络的激活有关。具体来说，采用所爱的人的角度会增加前扣带皮层和脑岛的活动，而想象一个陌生人会导致右侧颞顶联合（TPJ）和额上回的信号增加。参与者与伴侣的关系越亲密，右侧 TPJ 的去激活程度就越大。当参与者想象陌生人的视角时，发现右侧 TPJ 与脑岛之间存在负效连接，与额上回之间存在正效连接。这些结果表明，亲密关系会影响同理心所涉及的自下而上的信息处理，这表明自我和他人的神经表示之间有更大的重叠。
