Sleep and NeuroImaging Center, Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, 400715, China; Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (Southwest University), Ministry of Education, Chongqing, 400715, China.
Sleep and NeuroImaging Center, Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, 400715, China; Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (Southwest University), Ministry of Education, Chongqing, 400715, China.
Neuropsychologia. 2021 Dec 10;163:108084. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2021.108084. Epub 2021 Nov 8.
Empathy for pain has a strong adaptive function. It plays a protective role in survival and exerts a vital impact on successful social interaction. Sleep loss, however, is commonplace in current society, and people are increasingly plagued by it. Previous studies have investigated whether sleep loss affects empathy for pain, yet the results were undecided. We aimed to determine whether this effect is existed and further explore the temporal and frequency dynamics of neural activities involved in this effect by recording the electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. We recruited 25 healthy adults (11 females) who were required to perform a pain judgement and unpleasantness rating about the presented nociceptive and neutral pictures after nocturnal sleep (NS) and sleep deprivation (SD), and their neuronal activities were recorded by event-related potentials (ERPs). Results showed a significantly decreased amplitude in the early components (N2, N340) of vicarious pain processing after SD. In further time-frequency (TF) analysis, a reduced energy occurred in theta2 (5-7 Hz) band under SD condition. Moreover, the decreased theta2 was positively correlated with the subjective ratings of both other's pain and self-unpleasantness only under SD condition. Our results indicated that SD impairs affective sharing of empathy for pain.
疼痛共情具有很强的适应功能。它在生存中起着保护作用，并对成功的社会互动产生至关重要的影响。然而，在当今社会，睡眠不足是很常见的，人们越来越受到它的困扰。先前的研究已经调查了睡眠不足是否会影响对疼痛的共情，但结果尚无定论。我们旨在确定这种影响是否存在，并通过记录脑电图（EEG）信号进一步探索涉及这种影响的神经活动的时频动态。我们招募了 25 名健康成年人（11 名女性），他们需要在夜间睡眠（NS）和睡眠剥夺（SD）后对呈现的伤害性和中性图片进行疼痛判断和不愉快程度评分，并通过事件相关电位（ERPs）记录他们的神经元活动。结果表明，SD 后，替代性疼痛处理的早期成分（N2、N340）的振幅明显降低。在进一步的时频（TF）分析中，SD 条件下θ2（5-7 Hz）频段的能量减少。此外，只有在 SD 条件下，θ2 的减少与对他人疼痛和自我不愉快的主观评分呈正相关。我们的结果表明，SD 会损害对疼痛的共情的情感分享。
