Ashar Yoni K, Andrews-Hanna Jessica R, Dimidjian Sona, Wager Tor D
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.
Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.
Neuron. 2017 Jun 21;94(6):1263-1273.e4. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2017.05.014. Epub 2017 Jun 8.
Encountering another's suffering can elicit both empathic distress and empathic care-the warm desire to affiliate. It remains unclear whether these two feelings can be accurately and differentially predicted from neural activity and to what extent their neural substrates can be distinguished. We developed fMRI markers predicting moment-by-moment intensity levels of care and distress intensity while participants (n = 66) listened to true biographies describing human suffering. Both markers' predictions correlated strongly with self-report in out-of-sample participants (r = 0.59 and r = 0.63, p < 0.00001), and both markers predicted later trial-by-trial charitable donation amounts (p < 0.05). Empathic care was preferentially associated with nucleus accumbens and medial orbitofrontal cortex activity, whereas distress was preferentially associated with premotor and somatosensory cortical activity. In tests of marker specificity with an independent behavioral sample (n = 200), the empathic care marker was associated with a mixed-valence feeling state, whereas the empathic distress marker was specific to negative emotion.
目睹他人的痛苦会引发共情痛苦和共情关怀——即产生建立联系的热切愿望。目前尚不清楚这两种情感能否通过神经活动得到准确且有差异的预测，以及它们的神经基础在多大程度上能够被区分开来。我们开发了功能磁共振成像（fMRI）标记物，在参与者（n = 66）聆听描述人类痛苦的真实传记时，预测其即时的关怀强度水平和痛苦强度。在样本外参与者中，这两种标记物的预测结果与自我报告均高度相关（r = 0.59和r = 0.63，p < 0.00001），并且这两种标记物都能预测随后逐次试验的慈善捐赠金额（p < 0.05）。共情关怀优先与伏隔核和内侧眶额皮质活动相关，而痛苦则优先与运动前区和体感皮层活动相关。在对一个独立行为样本（n = 200）进行的标记物特异性测试中，共情关怀标记物与一种混合效价的情感状态相关，而共情痛苦标记物则特定于负面情绪。
