Department of Basic Psychological Research and Research Methods, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria.
Neurobiol Aging. 2018 May;65:7-17. doi: 10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2017.12.028. Epub 2018 Jan 9.
Empathy is essential for successful social interactions and relationships. The neural underpinnings of empathy have predominantly been studied in the young adult population, thus little is known about how they evolve across the life span. In the present study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate age-related differences in brain activity associated to empathy for positive and negative emotions. Female participants of 3 age groups-adolescents, young, and older adults-underwent an experimental paradigm inducing both first-hand and empathic experience of pleasant and unpleasant touch. Group comparisons and regression analyses revealed that older adults showed lower activation within the anterior insula with respect to young adults, during both empathy conditions. Further analyses provided evidence that years of education, theory of mind ability, gray matter volume, and first-hand affect processing did not account for these effects. These findings indicate that the neural bases of empathy change across different age groups, from adolescence to old age. Different ages and in particular older age seem to significantly influence the way in which we represent and share others' positive and negative emotions.
同理心对于成功的社交互动和人际关系至关重要。同理心的神经基础主要在年轻成年人中进行了研究，因此对于它们在整个生命周期中的演变知之甚少。在本研究中，我们使用功能磁共振成像来研究与积极和消极情绪的同理心相关的大脑活动的年龄相关差异。 3 个年龄组的女性参与者-青少年，年轻人和老年人-经历了一个实验范式，该范式诱发了愉快和不愉快的触觉的第一手和同理心体验。组比较和回归分析表明，在两种同理心条件下，与年轻人相比，老年人的前岛叶的激活程度较低。进一步的分析提供了证据，表明受教育年限，心理理论能力，灰质体积和第一手情感处理并不能解释这些影响。这些发现表明，同理心的神经基础在不同的年龄组中发生变化，从青春期到老年。不同的年龄，尤其是老年，似乎会极大地影响我们表达和分享他人积极和消极情绪的方式。
