Department of Neurology, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, 39120 Magdeburg, Germany.
Neuroimage. 2012 Apr 2;60(2):952-7. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.01.112. Epub 2012 Jan 28.
A growing body of evidence suggests an involvement of the somatosensory cortices for social perception. For example, it has been shown that observing touch on other bodies (in the absence of any real touch on the own body) affects somatosensory brain areas. Thus, understanding others' sensory experiences seems to rely on vicarious activation of somatosensory cortices. Recent studies also demonstrated that observation of painful and nonpainful touch engages the observer's somatosensory cortex differentially. The somatosensory activation during observation of painful stimulation has been related to trait differences in empathy, thereby drawing the attention to inter-individual differences in vicarious somatosensory activation. The current study aims to test the hypothesis if vicarious somatosensory activation during observation of nonpainful touch is also linked to inter-individual differences in empathy. We employed a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) paradigm to present video clips showing simple non-painful touch with a paintbrush to a hand relative to a control condition including the same visual and motion parts. Results revealed vicarious somatosensory activation when seeing the hand being touched. This activation was associated with trait differences in interpersonal reactivity. Thus, we found that the somatosensory response in primary somatosensory cortex (SI) was associated with the empathy subscale perspective taking. This link demonstrates that vicarious somatosensory responses for simple touch are influenced by the observer's personality traits, therefore suggesting a role for personality traits in a putative mirror neuron system.
越来越多的证据表明，躯体感觉皮层参与了社会知觉。例如，已经表明观察到其他人身上的触摸（在自己身体上没有任何真实触摸的情况下）会影响躯体感觉大脑区域。因此，理解他人的感官体验似乎依赖于躯体感觉皮层的替代激活。最近的研究还表明，观察疼痛和非疼痛触摸会使观察者的躯体感觉皮层以不同的方式参与。在观察疼痛刺激时的躯体感觉激活与同理心的特质差异有关，从而引起了对替代躯体感觉激活的个体间差异的关注。本研究旨在检验这样一个假设，即观察非疼痛触摸时的替代躯体感觉激活是否也与同理心的个体间差异有关。我们采用了功能磁共振成像（fMRI）范式，向手呈现用画笔进行简单非疼痛触摸的视频片段，相对于包括相同视觉和运动部分的对照条件。结果显示，当看到手被触摸时，会产生替代的躯体感觉激活。这种激活与人际反应性的特质差异有关。因此，我们发现，初级躯体感觉皮层（SI）中的躯体感觉反应与同理心子量表的换位思考有关。这种联系表明，简单触摸的替代躯体感觉反应受到观察者个性特征的影响，因此表明个性特征在假定的镜像神经元系统中起作用。
