Department of Developmental and Social Psychology, University of Padova, Via Venezia 8, 35131 Padova, Italy.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2014 Apr;9(4):454-63. doi: 10.1093/scan/nst003. Epub 2013 Jan 12.
Using the event-related potential (ERP) approach, we tracked the time-course of white participants' empathic reactions to white (own-race) and black (other-race) faces displayed in a painful condition (i.e. with a needle penetrating the skin) and in a nonpainful condition (i.e. with Q-tip touching the skin). In a 280-340 ms time-window, neural responses to the pain of own-race individuals under needle penetration conditions were amplified relative to neural responses to the pain of other-race individuals displayed under analogous conditions. This ERP reaction to pain, whose source was localized in the inferior frontal gyrus, correlated with the empathic concern ratings of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index questionnaire. In a 400-750 ms time-window, the difference between neural reactions to the pain of own-race individuals, localized in the middle frontal gyrus and other-race individuals, localized in the temporoparietal junction was reduced to nil. These findings support a functional, neural and temporal distinction between two sequential processing stages underlying empathy, namely, a race-biased stage of pain sharing/mirroring followed by a race-unbiased stage of cognitive evaluation of pain.
使用事件相关电位 (ERP) 方法，我们追踪了白人参与者对呈现于痛苦状态（即皮肤被针刺穿）和非痛苦状态（即棉花签触碰皮肤）的白人（本族）和黑人（异族）面孔的共情反应的时间进程。在 280-340ms 的时间窗口内，相对于异族个体在类似条件下的疼痛反应，个体对本族个体在针刺条件下的疼痛的神经反应得到了放大。这种对疼痛的 ERP 反应，其源位于下额前回，与人际反应指数问卷的共情关心评分相关。在 400-750ms 的时间窗口内，中间额回中个体对本族个体疼痛的神经反应与颞顶联合区中个体对异族个体疼痛的神经反应之间的差异减小到零。这些发现支持了共情所基于的两个连续处理阶段在功能、神经和时间上的区别，即疼痛共享/镜像的种族偏见阶段，接着是对疼痛的认知评估的种族无偏见阶段。
