Key Laboratory of Applied Psychology, Chongqing Normal University, Chongqing, China.
School of Mathematical Sciences, Chongqing Normal University, Chongqing, China.
Neuropsychologia. 2019 Oct;133:107177. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2019.107177. Epub 2019 Aug 24.
Pain is typically expressed through various sensory (e.g., visual and auditory) modalities: the human voice conveys information about social and affective communication. While the empathic responses to others' pain in the visual modality are modulated by top-down attention constraints, it remains unclear whether empathy for such expressions in the auditory modality also involves such top-down modulation mechanisms. Therefore, the present study investigates how neural correlates of empathic processes to others' vocal pain are modulated by the task-instructed attention manipulations. Each participant completed the following three tasks: (1) Pain Judgment Task, in which participants were instructed to pay attention to pain cues in vocal stimuli, (2) Gender Judgment Task, in which participants were instructed to pay attention to non-pain cues in vocal stimuli; (3) Passive Listening Task, a control task in which participants were instructed to passively listen to the vocal stimuli without any required response. The earlier frontal-central N1 response to either others' painful or neutral voice was greater in the Pain Judgment Task than in the other two tasks, suggesting a general attention modulation on the bottom-up sensory processing of vocal stimuli. The frontal-central P2 responses to others' painful voices was greater in the Pain Judgment Task than in the other two tasks, but not to others' neutral voices, thus suggesting selective attention modulation on the P2 response to others' pain. Late positive complex (LPC) to others' painful and neutral voices differed significantly regardless of task manipulations, thus suggesting empathic pain modulation on LPC response. All these results demonstrated top-down attention modulation on affective sharing responses others' vocal pain, but not on cognitive appraisal process of others' vocal pain.
疼痛通常通过各种感觉（例如视觉和听觉）模式表达：人类的声音传达了关于社交和情感交流的信息。虽然对他人视觉模式下疼痛的共情反应受到自上而下注意力限制的调节，但对于听觉模式下对这种表达的共情是否也涉及这种自上而下的调节机制尚不清楚。因此，本研究调查了对他人声音疼痛的共情过程的神经相关性如何受到任务指示的注意力操作的调节。每个参与者完成以下三个任务：（1）疼痛判断任务，参与者被指示注意声音刺激中的疼痛线索；（2）性别判断任务，参与者被指示注意声音刺激中的非疼痛线索；（3）被动聆听任务，这是一个控制任务，参与者被指示在没有任何要求的情况下被动聆听声音刺激。与其他两个任务相比，参与者对他人痛苦或中性声音的早期额中央 N1 反应在疼痛判断任务中更大，这表明对声音刺激的自下而上感觉处理有一般的注意力调节。与其他两个任务相比，参与者对他人痛苦声音的额中央 P2 反应在疼痛判断任务中更大，但对他人中性声音的 P2 反应没有更大，这表明对他人疼痛的 P2 反应有选择性注意力调节。无论任务操作如何，对他人痛苦和中性声音的晚期正性复合波（LPC）都有明显差异，因此表明对他人声音疼痛的 LPC 反应有共情疼痛调节。所有这些结果都表明对他人声音疼痛的情感共享反应有自上而下的注意力调节，但对他人声音疼痛的认知评估过程没有调节。
