Research Center for Brain Function and Psychological Science,Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China; Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Emotion and Social Cognitive Science, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China; Center for Language and Brain, Shenzhen Institute of Neuroscience, Shenzhen, China.
Key Laboratory of Applied Psychology, Chongqing Normal University, Chongqing, China.
Int J Psychophysiol. 2019 May;139:40-47. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2019.03.004. Epub 2019 Mar 13.
The present study aimed to investigate the alterations of psychophysiological responses to empathy for pain among patients with somatoform pain disorder (SPD). Behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) responses to pictures depicting hands or feet in different non-painful or painful situations were compared between 18 SPD patients and 18 healthy controls. Patients with SPD reported lower unpleasantness to the observation of others' pain than healthy controls, thus suggesting a reduced affective sharing to others' pain in SPD. While healthy controls showed significant different N2 and P3 responses between painful and non-painful stimulations, no significant difference was observed for patients with SPD. In addition, while both patients and controls showed enlarged late positive potential (LPP) response to painful stimulation than to non-painful stimulation, the differential LPP response was significantly smaller in patients than controls. These ERP results suggested a reduced response to empathy for pain in both early affective and late cognitive temporal stages in SPD. Mediation analysis further revealed that alexithymia mediated the effect of somatoform pain on empathic N2 responses, suggesting that the reduced early affective sharing process in SPD was mediated by their heightened alexithymia. To sum up, our results demonstrated the reduced psychophysiological responses to empathy for pain among patients with SPD, where the reduced affective sharing process could be explained by the concurrent alexithymia. While the altered empathy for pain exhibited by these patients with SPD could impact their social functioning, our study would provide some insights into interventions aimed at improving empathy-related social functioning.
本研究旨在探讨躯体形式疼痛障碍（SPD）患者对疼痛共情的心理生理反应变化。将 18 名 SPD 患者和 18 名健康对照者的行为和事件相关电位（ERP）对不同无痛或疼痛情况下的手或脚图片的反应进行了比较。与健康对照组相比，SPD 患者对他人疼痛的观察报告不愉快程度较低，这表明 SPD 患者对他人疼痛的情感共享减少。健康对照组在疼痛和非疼痛刺激之间表现出明显不同的 N2 和 P3 反应，但 SPD 患者则没有观察到明显差异。此外，尽管患者和对照组在疼痛刺激下均显示出较大的晚期正电位（LPP）反应，但与对照组相比，患者的差异 LPP 反应明显较小。这些 ERP 结果表明，在 SPD 中，共情疼痛的早期情感和晚期认知时间阶段的反应均减弱。中介分析进一步表明，躯体形式疼痛对共情 N2 反应的影响是由述情障碍介导的，这表明 SPD 中早期情感共享过程的减少是由其较高的述情障碍介导的。总之，我们的研究结果表明，躯体形式疼痛障碍患者对疼痛共情的心理生理反应减弱，而述情障碍可以解释这种情感共享过程的减少。这些 SPD 患者表现出的同理心改变可能会影响他们的社交功能，而我们的研究将为旨在改善同理心相关社交功能的干预措施提供一些见解。
