Chen Peng, Wang Guangming, Ma Ru, Jing Fang, Zhang Yongjun, Wang Ying, Zhang Peng, Niu Chaoshi, Zhang Xiaochu
Department of Neurosurgery, Anhui Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Anhui Medical University, Hefei, Anhui, China.
Anhui Province Key Laboratory of Brain Function and Brain Disease, Hefei, Anhui, China.
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2016 Oct;16(5):962-75. doi: 10.3758/s13415-016-0445-0.
Recent studies have provided evidence that there are two possible systems for empathy: affective empathy (AE) and cognitive empathy (CE). Neuroimaging paradigms have proven that the insular cortex is involved in empathy processing, particularly in AE. However, these observations do not provide causal evidence for the role of the insula in empathy. Although impairments in empathy have been described following insular damage in a few case studies, it is not clear whether insular cortex is involved in CE and whether these two systems are impaired independently or laterally in patients with insular gliomas. In this study, we assessed 17 patients with an insular glioma, 17 patients with a noninsular glioma, and 30 healthy controls using a method that combined a self-report empathy questionnaire with the emotion recognition task, assessment of empathy for others' pain, and the emotional perspective-taking paradigm. We found that patients with an insular glioma had lower scores for empathic concern and perspective taking than did either healthy controls or lesion controls. The patients' abilities to recognize facial emotions, perceive others' pain, and understand the emotional perspectives of others were also significantly impaired. Furthermore, we did not observe a laterality effect on either AE or CE among those with insular lesions. These findings revealed that both AE and CE are impaired in patients with an insular glioma and that the insular cortex may be a central neuroanatomical structure in both the AE and CE systems.
最近的研究提供了证据，表明存在两种可能的共情系统：情感共情（AE）和认知共情（CE）。神经影像学范式已证明，脑岛皮质参与共情过程，尤其是情感共情。然而，这些观察结果并未为脑岛在共情中的作用提供因果证据。尽管在一些病例研究中描述了脑岛损伤后共情受损的情况，但尚不清楚脑岛皮质是否参与认知共情，以及在患有脑岛胶质瘤的患者中这两种系统是独立受损还是单侧受损。在本研究中，我们使用一种将自我报告共情问卷与情绪识别任务、对他人疼痛的共情评估以及情感观点采择范式相结合的方法，对17例脑岛胶质瘤患者、17例非脑岛胶质瘤患者和30名健康对照进行了评估。我们发现，脑岛胶质瘤患者在共情关注和观点采择方面的得分低于健康对照或病变对照。患者识别面部情绪、感知他人疼痛以及理解他人情感观点的能力也显著受损。此外，我们在脑岛病变患者中未观察到情感共情或认知共情的单侧效应。这些发现表明，脑岛胶质瘤患者的情感共情和认知共情均受损，并且脑岛皮质可能是情感共情和认知共情系统中的一个核心神经解剖结构。
