École de psychologie, Université Laval, 2325, rue des Bibliothèques, Québec G1V 0A6, Canada; Centre interdisciplinaire de recherche en réadaptation et intégration sociale (CIRRIS), 525, boulevard Wilfrid-Hamel, Québec, Québec G1M 2S8, Canada; Centre de recherche CERVO, 2601, rue de la Canardière, Québec, Québec G1J 2G3, Canada.
Georgian College, 1, Georgian Dr, Barrie, Ontario L4M 3X9, Canada.
Brain Cogn. 2022 Jun;159:105859. doi: 10.1016/j.bandc.2022.105859. Epub 2022 Mar 16.
Empathy is the capacity to feel and understand others' mental states. In some individuals, there is an imbalance between the affective and cognitive components of empathy, which can lead to deficits. This study investigated the functional connectivity of the anterior insula (AI) and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), which play key roles in empathy, in covariation with the affective and cognitive subscales of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), as a function of age and sex, as an exploratory analysis. Seed-based functional connectivity analyses were performed on 33 healthy participants that were subdivided according to their age (16 adults and 17 adolescents) and sex (16 women and 17 men). Adolescents reported lower cognitive empathy than adults and men less affective empathy than women. The connectivity of the dmPFC and AI, in covariation with the cognitive and affective subscales of empathy, respectively, differed between adolescents and adults, but was similar in men and women. Adolescents had patterns of negative covariations between the regions of interest and many brain regions associated with the default-mode and salience networks. These findings support that lower self-report levels of empathy in certain individuals could be reflected in the functional connectivity patterns of the dmPFC and AI.
同理心是指感受和理解他人心理状态的能力。在某些个体中，同理心的情感和认知成分之间存在不平衡，这可能导致缺陷。本研究探讨了前脑岛 (AI) 和背内侧前额叶皮层 (dmPFC) 的功能连接，这些区域在同理心方面起着关键作用，作为探索性分析，其与人际反应指数 (IRI) 的情感和认知分量表共变，作为年龄和性别的函数。对 33 名健康参与者进行了基于种子的功能连接分析，根据年龄（16 名成人和 17 名青少年）和性别（16 名女性和 17 名男性）进行了细分。青少年的认知同理心比成人低，男性的情感同理心比女性低。dmPFC 和 AI 的连接性，与同理心的认知和情感分量表共变，在青少年和成年人之间存在差异，但在男性和女性之间相似。青少年的研究结果支持这样一种观点，即某些个体自我报告的同理心水平较低可能反映在 dmPFC 和 AI 的功能连接模式中。
