Jospe Karine, Flöel Agnes, Lavidor Michal
Department of Psychology, The Hebrew University, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem, 9190501, Israel.
Department of Neurology, University Medicine of Greifswald, Ferdinand-Sauerbruch-Straße, 17489, Greifswald, Germany.
Neuropsychologia. 2020 Apr;141:107412. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107412. Epub 2020 Feb 25.
Previous research has demonstrated that the Action-Observation Network (AON) is involved in both emotional-embodiment (empathy) and action-embodiment mechanisms. In the current study, we hypothesized that interfering with the AON will impair action recognition and that this impairment will be modulated by empathy levels. Fifty-two participants conducted a semantic decision task of hand gesture recognition, while we interfered with the AON by applying active (n = 26) or sham (n = 26) transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) to the hand area of the primary motor cortex. We found that interfering with the AON impaired the performance of participants with high empathy levels and enhanced the performance of participants with low empathy. This finding suggests that the embodiment module may be flexible, and that it can be enhanced in individuals with low empathy by simple manipulation of motor activation.
先前的研究表明，动作观察网络（AON）参与了情感体现（共情）和动作体现机制。在本研究中，我们假设干扰AON会损害动作识别，并且这种损害会受到共情水平的调节。52名参与者进行了手势识别的语义决策任务，同时我们通过对初级运动皮层的手部区域施加主动（n = 26）或伪刺激（n = 26）经颅直流电刺激（tDCS）来干扰AON。我们发现，干扰AON会损害高共情水平参与者的表现，而增强低共情水平参与者的表现。这一发现表明，体现模块可能具有灵活性，并且通过简单地操纵运动激活，可以增强低共情个体的该模块。
