Knight Lindsay K, Stoica Teodora, Fogleman Nicholas D, Depue Brendan E
Interdisciplinary Program in Translational Neuroscience (IPTN), University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, United States.
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, United States.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2019 Mar 19;13:94. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2019.00094. eCollection 2019.
Empathy is characterized by the ability to understand and share an emotional experience with another person and is closely tied to compassion and concern for others. Consequently, this increased emotional awareness and sensitivity may also be related to increased anxiety. Taken from another perspective, higher general anxiety may translate into increased concern for others, or concern for how one's actions might affect others, and therefore may be linked to increased empathy. Furthermore, self-reflection is positively related to perspective-taking and empathic concern, while rumination is closely tied to anxiety, thus providing an additional connecting point between empathy and anxiety through enhanced internally generated thought. While previous literature suggests a relationship between empathy and anxiety, this has yet to be empirically studied using neuroimaging tools aimed at investigating the underlying neural correlates that may support these convergent responses. We therefore conducted an functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study ( = 49) in which participants viewed fearful and neutral human faces and rated how the faces made them feel, to promote introspection. Participants also completed questionnaires assessing empathy Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (TEQ), trait anxiety State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), worry Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ) and rumination Ruminative Responses Scale (RRS). Behaviorally, empathy positively correlated with worry, worry and rumination positively correlated with anxiety, and significant indirect relationships were found between empathy and anxiety through worry and rumination. Using the neuroimaging face processing task as a backdrop on which the neurobiological mechanisms of empathy and anxiety may interact, regressions of questionnaires with brain activations revealed that empathy related to activation in the temporoparietal junction (TPJ), anxiety related to bilateral insula activation, and worry related to medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) activation, while rumination showed increased engagement of all three aforementioned regions. Functional connectivity (FC) analyses showed increased communication between the left amygdala and insula related to higher empathy, worry and rumination. Finally, whole-brain analysis using median split groups from questionnaires revealed that the lower halves of anxiety, worry and rumination exhibited increased activation in top-down attentional networks. In sum, empathy, worry and rumination related to enhanced bottom-up processing, while worry, rumination and anxiety exhibited decreased top-down attentional control, suggesting an indirect relationship between empathy and anxiety through the ruminative tendencies of worry.
同理心的特点是能够理解他人的情感体验并与之分享，且与对他人的同情和关心密切相关。因此，这种增强的情感意识和敏感性也可能与焦虑增加有关。从另一个角度来看，较高的一般性焦虑可能转化为对他人更多的关心，或者对自己的行为可能如何影响他人的关心，因此可能与同理心的增加有关。此外，自我反思与换位思考和同理心关怀呈正相关，而反复思考则与焦虑密切相关，从而通过增强内在产生的思维在同理心和焦虑之间提供了另一个连接点。虽然先前的文献表明同理心与焦虑之间存在关系，但尚未使用旨在研究可能支持这些趋同反应的潜在神经关联的神经成像工具进行实证研究。因此，我们进行了一项功能磁共振成像（fMRI）研究（n = 49），参与者观看恐惧和中性的人脸，并对这些面孔给他们的感受进行评分，以促进内省。参与者还完成了评估同理心的多伦多同理心问卷（TEQ）、特质焦虑的状态-特质焦虑量表（STAI）、担忧的宾夕法尼亚州立大学担忧问卷（PSWQ）和反复思考的反复思考反应量表（RRS）。在行为上，同理心与担忧呈正相关，担忧和反复思考与焦虑呈正相关，并且通过担忧和反复思考发现同理心与焦虑之间存在显著的间接关系。以神经成像面部处理任务为背景，在该背景下同理心和焦虑的神经生物学机制可能相互作用，将问卷与大脑激活进行回归分析发现，同理心与颞顶联合区（TPJ）的激活有关，焦虑与双侧脑岛激活有关，担忧与内侧前额叶皮质（mPFC）激活有关，而反复思考则显示上述三个区域的参与增加。功能连接（FC）分析表明，左杏仁核与脑岛之间的交流增加与更高的同理心、担忧和反复思考有关。最后，使用问卷的中位数分割组进行全脑分析发现，焦虑、担忧和反复思考得分较低的人群在自上而下的注意力网络中表现出激活增加。总之，同理心、担忧和反复思考与增强的自下而上处理有关，而担忧、反复思考和焦虑则表现出自上而下注意力控制的降低，这表明通过担忧的反复思考倾向，同理心与焦虑之间存在间接关系。
