Neuropsychopharmacology and Brain Imaging, Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Psychiatric Hospital, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland; Heffter Research Center Zurich, Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Psychiatric Hospital, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland; Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Int J Neuropsychopharmacol. 2017 Sep 1;20(9):747-757. doi: 10.1093/ijnp/pyx047.
Impaired empathic abilities lead to severe negative social consequences and influence the development and treatment of several psychiatric disorders. Furthermore, empathy has been shown to play a crucial role in moral and prosocial behavior. Although the serotonin system has been implicated in modulating empathy and moral behavior, the relative contribution of the various serotonin receptor subtypes is still unknown.
We investigated the acute effect of psilocybin (0.215 mg/kg p.o.) in healthy human subjects on different facets of empathy and hypothetical moral decision-making using the multifaceted empathy test (n=32) and the moral dilemma task (n=24).
Psilocybin significantly increased emotional, but not cognitive empathy compared with placebo, and the increase in implicit emotional empathy was significantly associated with psilocybin-induced changed meaning of percepts. In contrast, moral decision-making remained unaffected by psilocybin.
These findings provide first evidence that psilocybin has distinct effects on social cognition by enhancing emotional empathy but not moral behavior. Furthermore, together with previous findings, psilocybin appears to promote emotional empathy presumably via activation of serotonin 2A/1A receptors, suggesting that targeting serotonin 2A/1A receptors has implications for potential treatment of dysfunctional social cognition.
同理心能力受损会导致严重的负面社会后果，并影响多种精神障碍的发展和治疗。此外，同理心在道德和亲社会行为中起着至关重要的作用。尽管血清素系统被认为可以调节同理心和道德行为，但各种血清素受体亚型的相对贡献仍不清楚。
我们使用多维同理心测试（n=32）和道德困境任务（n=24），调查了口服 0.215 毫克/公斤裸盖菇素对健康人类受试者不同同理心方面和假设道德决策的急性影响。
与安慰剂相比，裸盖菇素显著增加了情绪同理心，而不是认知同理心，并且内隐情绪同理心的增加与裸盖菇素引起的感知意义变化显著相关。相比之下，道德决策不受裸盖菇素影响。
这些发现首次提供了证据，表明裸盖菇素通过增强情绪同理心而不是道德行为对社会认知具有独特的影响。此外，结合以前的发现，裸盖菇素似乎通过激活血清素 2A/1A 受体来促进情绪同理心，这表明靶向血清素 2A/1A 受体可能对治疗功能失调的社会认知具有重要意义。
