1 Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania.
2 Department of Psychology, Georgetown University.
Psychol Sci. 2018 Oct;29(10):1631-1641. doi: 10.1177/0956797618779590. Epub 2018 Aug 21.
Shared neural representations during experienced and observed distress are hypothesized to reflect empathic neural simulation, which may support altruism. But the correspondence between real-world altruism and shared neural representations has not been directly tested, and empathy's role in promoting altruism toward strangers has been questioned. Here, we show that individuals who have performed costly altruism (donating a kidney to a stranger; n = 25) exhibit greater self-other overlap than matched control participants ( n = 27) in neural representations of pain and threat (fearful anticipation) in anterior insula (AI) during an empathic-pain paradigm. Altruists exhibited greater self-other correspondence in pain-related activation in left AI, highlighting that group-level overlap was supported by individual-level associations between empathic pain and firsthand pain. Altruists exhibited enhanced functional coupling of left AI with left midinsula during empathic pain and threat. Results show that heightened neural instantiations of empathy correspond to real-world altruism and highlight limitations of self-report.
人们假设，在经历和观察痛苦时，共同的神经表现反映了共情的神经模拟，这可能支持利他主义。但是，现实世界中的利他主义与共同神经表现之间的一致性尚未得到直接检验，而且共情在促进对陌生人的利他主义方面的作用也受到了质疑。在这里，我们表明，与匹配的对照组参与者（n=27）相比，进行过昂贵的利他行为（向陌生人捐献肾脏；n=25）的个体在经历共情疼痛范式时，前岛叶（anterior insula，AI）中疼痛和威胁（恐惧预期）的神经表现中，自我与他人的重叠程度更高。利他主义者在左 AI 中与疼痛相关的激活中表现出更高的自我与他人的一致性，这表明组水平的重叠是由共情疼痛和第一手疼痛之间的个体水平关联支持的。在共情疼痛和威胁期间，利他主义者的左 AI 与左中脑岛之间的功能耦合增强。研究结果表明，同理心的神经表现增强与现实世界中的利他主义相对应，并强调了自我报告的局限性。
