Does It Look Painful or Disgusting? Ask Your Parietal and Cingulate Cortex

Abstract

Looking at still images of body parts in situations that are likely to cause pain has been shown to be associated with activation in some brain areas involved in pain processing. Because pain involves both sensory components and negative affect, it is of interest to explore whether the visually evoked representations of pain and of other negative emotions overlap. By means of event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, here we compare the brain areas recruited, in female volunteers, by the observation of painful, disgusting, or neutral stimuli delivered to one hand or foot. Several cortical foci were activated by the observation of both painful and disgusting video clips, including portions of the medial prefrontal cortex, anterior, mid-, and posterior cingulate cortex, left posterior insula, and right parietal operculum. Signal changes in perigenual cingulate and left anterior insula were linearly related to the perceived unpleasantness, when the individual differences in susceptibility to aversive stimuli were taken into account. Painful scenes selectively induced activation of left parietal foci, including the parietal operculum, the postcentral gyrus, and adjacent portions of the posterior parietal cortex. In contrast, brain foci specific for disgusting scenes were found in the posterior cingulate cortex. These data show both similarities and differences between the brain patterns of activity related to the observation of noxious or disgusting stimuli. Namely, the parietal cortex appears to be particularly involved in the recognition of noxious environmental stimuli, suggesting that areas involved in sensory aspects of pain are specifically triggered by observing noxious events.

Hearing others’ pain: neural activity related to empathy

“…These included the left anterior insula, SII, thalamus, and right cerebellum. Consistent with previous neuroimaging studies using complex visual stimuli, activation of these areas involved in empathy for pain was replicated with pain-related exclamations, without a physical sensation of actual pain (Benuzzi, Luim, Duzzi, Nichelli, & Porro, 2008;Jackson, Meltzoff, & Decety, 2005;Jackson, Rainville, & Decety, 2006;Simon, Craig, Miltner, & Rainville, 2006).…”

“…On the other hand, previous transcranial magnetic stimulation studies (Avenanti et al, 2005;Avenanti et al, 2006) and somatosensory evoked potential studies (Bufalari, Aprile, Avenanti, Di Russo, & Aglioti, 2007) highlighted the possible sensorimotor aspect of empathy for pain. In recent years, subsequent fMRI studies supported these findings, demonstrating that both affective and somatosensory components of the pain matrix are activated during watching of complex visual scenes (Benuzzi et al, 2008;Costantini et al, 2008;Han et al, 2009;Lamm, Batson, & Decety, 2007a). The present finding indicates a pivotal role of the somatosensory cortex in hearing the pain of other individuals, although participants were not instructed to pay attention to the somatosensory aspect.…”

“…The most important limitation is our (as well as all other authors') failure to find the optimal control condition, in which the stimuli presented are acoustically similar and possess the same arousal and valence ratings, but do not elicit an empathic first-person experience. For example, Benuzzi et al (2008) used disgusting pictures as controls for painrelated pictures but found that disgust was significantly less unpleasant than pain; thus, the difference in neural responses (i.e., empathy vs. disgust) could also be attributed to the different valence. We did not find appropriate auditory disgust stimuli, and thus do not know whether such stimuli might attain the level of negative valence characteristic for pain-related cries.…”

Synchronous with Your Feelings: Sensorimotor γ Band and Empathy for Pain

“…These studies provided important clues on some of the possible variables that modulate empathy for pain (Singer et al, 2006;Avenanti et al, 2006;Cheng et al, 2007;Valeriani et al, 2008) and on whether this process impinges upon the affective (Morrison et al, 2004;Singer et al, 2004), the sensorimotor (Avenanti et al, 2005;2006;Bufalari et al, 2007;Valeriani et al, 2008), or both components of the pain matrix (Saarela et al, 2007;Benuzzi et al, 2008;Costantini et al, 2008). Thus, the neural mapping of empathic phenomena has mainly been studied in terms of spatial changes of activity in single or multiple regions within or outside the pain matrix.…”

The pain of a model in the personality of an onlooker: Influence of state-reactivity and personality traits on embodied empathy for pain

“…These onlookers' 'mirror-like' inhibitory corticospinal responses are specific to the body part stimulated in the model and correlate with the evaluation of spread and intensity (but not of the unpleasantness) of the pain ascribed to the model (Avenanti et al, 2005Minio-Paluello et al, 2006); thus, the inhibition likely reflects the simulation of basic sensory features of others' pain (intensity, diffusion, localization of pain) (Avenanti et al, 2005). In a similar vein, somatosensory-evoked potentials (SEPs, Bufalari et al, 2007), laser-evoked potentials (LEPs, Valeriani et al, 2008), magnetoencephalography (MEG, Cheng et al, 2008a) and neuroimaging studies (Jackson et al, 2006;Saarela et al, 2007;Moriguchi et al, 2007;Cheng et al, 2007;Lamm et al, 2007a;Lamm et al, 2007b;Benuzzi et al, 2008) indicate specific pain-related activity into the observers' somatomotor system during empathy for pain.…”