He Jingxian, Bore Mercy Chepngetich, Jiang Heng, Gan Xianyang, Wang Junjie, Li Jialin, Xu Xiaolei, Wang Lan, Fu Kun, Li Liyuan, Zhou Bo, Kendrick Keith, Becker Benjamin
Center of Psychosomatic Medicine, Sichuan Provincial Center for Mental Health, Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China; School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China.
Max Planck School of Cognition, Leipzig, Germany.
Biol Psychiatry Cogn Neurosci Neuroimaging. 2025 Feb;10(2):127-137. doi: 10.1016/j.bpsc.2024.08.019. Epub 2024 Sep 10.
Pain empathy represents a fundamental building block of several social functions, which have been demonstrated to be impaired across various mental disorders by accumulating evidence from case-control functional magnetic resonance imaging studies. However, it remains unclear whether the dysregulations are underpinned by robust neural alterations across mental disorders.
This study utilized coordinate-based meta-analyses to quantitatively determine robust markers of altered pain empathy across mental disorders. To support the interpretation of the findings, exploratory network-level and behavioral meta-analyses were conducted.
Quantitative analysis of 11 case-control functional magnetic resonance imaging studies with data from 296 patients and 229 control participants revealed that patients with mental disorders exhibited increased pain empathic reactivity in the left anterior cingulate gyrus, adjacent medial prefrontal cortex, and right middle temporal gyrus but decreased activity in the left cerebellum IV/V and left middle occipital gyrus compared with control participants. The hyperactive regions showed network-level interactions with the core default mode network and were associated with affective and social cognitive domains.
The findings suggest that pain empathic alterations across mental disorders are underpinned by excessive empathic reactivity in brain systems involved in empathic distress and social processes, highlighting a shared therapeutic target to normalize basal social dysfunctions in mental disorders.
疼痛共情是多种社会功能的基本组成部分，病例对照功能磁共振成像研究的证据不断积累，表明在各种精神障碍中这些功能均受到损害。然而，尚不清楚这些失调是否由精神障碍中强大的神经改变所支撑。
本研究利用基于坐标的荟萃分析来定量确定精神障碍中疼痛共情改变的强大标志物。为支持对研究结果的解释，进行了探索性网络水平和行为荟萃分析。
对11项病例对照功能磁共振成像研究（数据来自296名患者和229名对照参与者）的定量分析显示，与对照参与者相比，精神障碍患者在左侧前扣带回、相邻的内侧前额叶皮质和右侧颞中回表现出增强的疼痛共情反应性，但在左侧小脑IV/V和左侧枕中回活动减少。这些活跃区域与核心默认模式网络表现出网络水平的相互作用，并与情感和社会认知领域相关。
研究结果表明，精神障碍中的疼痛共情改变是由参与共情痛苦和社会过程的脑系统中过度的共情反应性所支撑，突出了一个共同的治疗靶点，以使精神障碍中的基础社会功能障碍正常化。
