Ren Qiaoyue, Yang Ye, Wo Ye, Lu Xuejing, Hu Li
CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Beijing, China.
Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2022 Mar;1509(1):184-202. doi: 10.1111/nyas.14723. Epub 2021 Dec 7.
The shared-representation model of empathy is still debated. One of the major questions is whether empathy-eliciting stimuli depicting others' pain selectively activate the representations of self-pain. To address this issue, we assessed the priming effects of empathy-eliciting pictures on firsthand pain and nonpain perception, as well as its associated neural processing. In Experiment 1, when compared with nonpainful pictures depicting individuals' body parts with no injury, participants primed by painful pictures showing individuals' body parts with injury reported higher ratings for perceived intensity, unpleasantness, and salience of nociceptive and auditory stimuli, but they only exhibited increased N2 amplitude in response to nociceptive stimuli. In Experiment 2, the results from another group of participants replicated the observations of Experiment 1 and validated the findings in the non-nociceptive somatosensory modality. Importantly, participants' concern ratings for priming pictures predicted their unpleasantness ratings for subsequent nociceptive stimuli, while participants' attention ratings predicted their unpleasantness ratings for subsequent auditory and tactile stimuli. This finding implies that empathy for pain might influence pain and nonpain perception via different psychological mechanisms. In summary, our findings highlight the existence of pain-selective representations in empathy for pain and contribute to a better understanding of the shared-representation model of empathy.
共情的共享表征模型仍存在争议。其中一个主要问题是，描绘他人疼痛的共情诱发刺激是否会选择性地激活自我疼痛的表征。为了解决这个问题，我们评估了共情诱发图片对第一手疼痛和非疼痛感知及其相关神经加工的启动效应。在实验1中，与描绘未受伤个体身体部位的非疼痛图片相比，被展示受伤个体身体部位的疼痛图片启动的参与者对伤害性和听觉刺激的感知强度、不愉快程度和显著性的评分更高，但他们仅在对伤害性刺激的反应中表现出N2波幅增加。在实验2中，另一组参与者的结果重复了实验1的观察结果，并在非伤害性体感模态中验证了这些发现。重要的是，参与者对启动图片的关注评分预测了他们对随后伤害性刺激的不愉快评分，而参与者的注意力评分预测了他们对随后听觉和触觉刺激的不愉快评分。这一发现意味着对疼痛的共情可能通过不同的心理机制影响疼痛和非疼痛感知。总之，我们的研究结果突出了疼痛共情中疼痛选择性表征的存在，并有助于更好地理解共情的共享表征模型。
