A developmental perspective on the neural bases of human empathy

Abstract

While empathy has been widely studied in philosophical and psychological literatures, recent advances in social neuroscience have shed light on the neural correlates of this complex interpersonal phenomenon. In this review, we provide an overview of brain imaging studies that have investigated the neural substrates of human empathy. Based on existing models of the functional architecture of empathy, we review evidence of the neural underpinnings of each main component, as well as their development from infancy. Although early precursors of affective sharing and self-other distinction appear to be present from birth, recent findings also suggest that even higher-order components of empathy such as perspective-taking and emotion regulation demonstrate signs of development during infancy. This merging of developmental and social neuroscience literature thus supports the view that ontogenic development of empathy is rooted in early infancy, well before the emergence of verbal abilities. With age, the refinement of top-down mechanisms may foster more appropriate empathic responses, thus promoting greater altruistic motivation and prosocial behaviors.

Greater Empathic Abilities and Their Correlation With Resting State Brain Connectivity in Psychotherapists Compared to Non-Psychotherapists

“…Empathy can be considered as an 'umbrella' term that encompasses all processes that emerge, so an observer could understand the "other's" state by activating their own neural and mental representations of that state. In this view, empathy is a multicomponent process that encompasses cognitive processes, such as mentalizing or emotional regulation, and affective processes such as empathic concern or emotional detection, to name a few (de Waal & Preston, 2017;Decety, 2011;Tousignant et al, 2017;Zaki & Ochsner, 2012). Taking into account the nature of sub-processes that are involved in the empathic response, it is easy to address empathy as a personalized phenomenon which response can be regulated.…”

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“…Identifying the neural substrates of empathy in healthy populations is important for understanding conditions that are characterised by empathic difficulties. In neuroscience, the concept of empathy is considered to include separate affective (sharing others' emotion) and cognitive (understanding others' emotion) components (for example, Tousignant et al., 2017 ; Lockwood, 2016 ). Previous research has identified distinct clusters of brain regions involved in affective empathy: medial/anterior cingulate cortex (MCC, ACC), anterior insula (AI) ( Fan et al., 2011 ; Lamm et al., 2011 ), and supplementary motor area (SMA) ( Lamm et al., 2011 ).…”

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