School of Psychology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, G12 8QB, UK.
School of Psychology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, G12 8QB, UK; School of Engineering, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, G12 8QB, UK.
Neuroimage. 2019 Sep;198:53-62. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2019.05.021. Epub 2019 May 10.
The right anterior insula (AI), known to have a key role in the processing and understanding of social emotions, is activated during tasks that involve the act of empathising. Neurofeedback provides individuals with a visualisation of their own brain activity, enabling them to regulate and modify this activity. Following previous research investigating the ability of individuals to up-regulate right AI activity levels through neurofeedback, we investigated whether this could be similarly accomplished during an empathy task involving auditory stimuli of human positive and negative emotional expressions. Twenty participants, ten with feedback from right anterior insula and ten with feedback from a sham brain region, participated in two sessions that included sixteen neurofeedback runs and four transfer runs. Results showed that for the second session participants in the right AI neurofeedback group demonstrated better ability to up-regulate their right AI compared to the control group who received sham feedback. Examination of the relationship between individual participants' empathic traits and their ability to up-regulate right AI activity showed that participants low on empathic traits produced a greater increase in activation of right AI by the end of training. Moreover, the response to positively valenced audio stimuli was greater than for negatively valenced stimuli. These results have implications for therapeutic training of empathy in populations with limited empathic response.
右侧前岛叶（AI）被认为在处理和理解社会情绪方面起着关键作用，在涉及共情行为的任务中会被激活。神经反馈为个体提供了自身大脑活动的可视化，使他们能够调节和改变这种活动。在前一项研究调查了个体通过神经反馈增加右侧 AI 活动水平的能力之后，我们研究了在涉及人类积极和消极情绪表达的听觉刺激的共情任务中是否可以类似地完成。20 名参与者，其中 10 名接受来自右侧前岛叶的反馈，10 名接受来自假脑区的反馈，参加了两个包括 16 次神经反馈运行和 4 次转移运行的会议。结果表明，对于第二阶段，接受右侧 AI 神经反馈的参与者比接受假反馈的对照组更好地增强了他们的右侧 AI。检查个体参与者的共情特质与其增强右侧 AI 活动能力之间的关系表明，具有较低共情特质的参与者在训练结束时右侧 AI 的激活增加幅度更大。此外，对正价音频刺激的反应大于对负价刺激的反应。这些结果对具有有限共情反应的人群的共情治疗训练具有重要意义。
