Laursen Helle Ruff, Siebner Hartwig Roman, Haren Tina, Madsen Kristoffer, Grønlund Rikke, Hulme Oliver, Henningsson Susanne
Danish Research Centre for Magnetic Resonance, Centre for Functional and Diagnostic Imaging and Research, Copenhagen University Hospital Hvidovre Hvidovre, Denmark.
Danish Research Centre for Magnetic Resonance, Centre for Functional and Diagnostic Imaging and Research, Copenhagen University Hospital Hvidovre Hvidovre, Denmark ; Department of Neurology, Bispebjerg Hospital, University of Copenhagen Copenhagen, Denmark.
Front Behav Neurosci. 2014 Dec 5;8:423. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2014.00423. eCollection 2014.
The neuromodulators oxytocin and serotonin have been implicated in regulating affective processes underlying empathy. Understanding this dependency, however, has been limited by a lack of objective metrics for measuring empathic performance. Here we employ a novel psychophysical method for measuring empathic performance that quantitatively measures the ability of subjects to decode the experience of another person's pain. In 50 female subjects, we acquired functional magnetic resonance imaging data as they were exposed to a target subject experiencing variable degrees of pain, whilst performing an irrelevant attention-demanding task. We investigated the effect of variation in the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) and the serotonin transporter gene (SLC6A4) on the psychophysical and neurometric variability associated with empathic performance. The OXTR rs2268498 and rs53576 polymorphisms, but not the SLC6A4 5-HTTLPR, were associated with significant differences in empathic accuracy, with CC- and AA-carriers, respectively, displaying higher empathic accuracy. For OXTR rs2268498 there was also a genotype difference in the correlation between empathic accuracy and activity in the superior temporal sulcus (STS). In OXTR rs2268498 CC-carriers, high empathic accuracy was associated with stronger responsiveness of the right STS to the observed pain. Together, the results show that genetic variation in the OXTR has significant influence on empathic accuracy and that this may be linked to variable responsivity of the STS.
神经调节物质催产素和血清素与调节共情背后的情感过程有关。然而，由于缺乏衡量共情表现的客观指标，对这种依赖性的理解一直受到限制。在此，我们采用一种新颖的心理物理学方法来测量共情表现，该方法定量测量受试者解码他人疼痛体验的能力。在50名女性受试者中，当她们接触到经历不同程度疼痛的目标受试者时，我们采集了功能磁共振成像数据，同时她们要执行一项无关的、需要注意力的任务。我们研究了催产素受体基因（OXTR）和血清素转运体基因（SLC6A4）的变异对与共情表现相关的心理物理学和神经测量变异性的影响。OXTR的rs2268498和rs53576多态性，而非SLC6A4的5-HTTLPR，与共情准确性的显著差异相关，CC携带者和AA携带者分别表现出更高的共情准确性。对于OXTR rs2268498，共情准确性与颞上沟（STS）活动之间的相关性也存在基因型差异。在OXTR rs2268498的CC携带者中，高共情准确性与右侧STS对观察到的疼痛的更强反应性相关。总之，结果表明OXTR的基因变异对共情准确性有显著影响，这可能与STS的可变反应性有关。
