Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, USA.
Neuroimage. 2010 Jul 15;51(4):1468-75. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.03.025. Epub 2010 Mar 17.
A central evolutionary challenge for social groups is uniting a heterogeneous set of individuals towards common goals. One means by which social groups form and endure is by endowing group members with extraordinary prosocial proclivities, such as ingroup love, towards other group members. Here we examined the neural basis of extraordinary empathy and altruistic motivation in African-American and Caucasian-American individuals using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Our results indicate that empathy for ingroup members is neurally distinct from empathy for humankind, more generally. People showed greater response within anterior cingulate cortex and bilateral insula when observing the suffering of others, but African-American individuals additionally recruit medial prefrontal cortex when observing the suffering of members of their own social group. Moreover, neural activity within medial prefrontal cortex in response to pain expressed by ingroup relative to outgroup members predicted greater empathy and altruistic motivation for one's ingroup, suggesting that neurocognitive processes associated with self identity underlie extraordinary empathy and altruistic motivation for members of one's own social group. Taken together, our findings reveal distinct neural mechanisms of empathy and altruistic motivation in an intergroup context and may serve as a foundation for future research investigating the neural bases of intergroup prosociality, more broadly construed.
社会群体面临的一个核心进化挑战是将一组异构的个体团结在共同的目标下。社会群体形成和持续的一种方式是赋予群体成员非凡的亲社会倾向，例如对其他群体成员的内群体之爱。在这里，我们使用功能磁共振成像技术研究了非裔美国人和白种美国人群体中非凡同理心和利他动机的神经基础。我们的研究结果表明，对同群体成员的同理心在神经上与更广泛意义上的对人类的同理心不同。当观察到他人的痛苦时，人们在前扣带皮层和双侧脑岛的反应更大，但当观察到自己社会群体成员的痛苦时，非裔美国人还会额外招募内侧前额叶皮层。此外，内侧前额叶皮层对同群体成员与外群体成员表达的疼痛的反应中的神经活动，预测了对自己同群体的更大同理心和利他动机，这表明与自我认同相关的神经认知过程是对自己社会群体成员产生非凡同理心和利他动机的基础。总之，我们的发现揭示了群体间同理心和利他动机的不同神经机制，并可能为未来更广泛地研究群体间亲社会性的神经基础提供基础。
