Functional relations of empathy and mentalizing: An fMRI study on the neural basis of cognitive empathy

Schnell, Knut; Bluschke, Sarah; Konradt, Brigitte; Walter, Henrik

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.08.024

Cited by 196 publications

(169 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…However, it should be noted that mentalizing is conceptually different from these other constructs (David et al 2008;David et al 2010;Schnell et al 2011;Yoshiy et al 2006). Sympathy and empathy often also entail a vicarious emotional response to the perceived emotions of others or a feeling of concern about others' distress.…”

Section: Mentalizingmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Persuasiveness of Similar Others: The Role of Mentalizing and the Feeling of Certainty

Faraji-Rad¹,

Samuelsen

Warlop

2015

SSRN Journal

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Section: Mentalizingmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Persuasiveness of Similar Others: The Role of Mentalizing and the Feeling of Certainty

Faraji-Rad¹,

Samuelsen

Warlop

2015

SSRN Journal

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“…The interaction of phenomenological and physiological concepts offers a broad space for confusion. I will try to illustrate a possible approach by delineating the process of designing a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) task to explore mentalizing processes in depression and schizophrenia [13,14]. …”

Section: Mentalizing As a Subject Of Experimental Psychopathologymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, it is crucial to explore the interaction between mentalizing and the processing of emotional stimuli. Besides such a segregation of regional activation by emotional and nonemotional content, another case of selective activation can be found in posterior regions of the network, where the TPJ is rather activated by cognitive demand [15] or visuospatial transformations [13] involved in mentalizing processes. …”

Section: Mentalizing As a Subject Of Experimental Psychopathologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Mentalizing Functions Provide a Conceptual Link of Brain Function and Social Cognition in Major Mental Disorders

Schnell

2014

Psychopathology

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The review presents a research perspective that defines mentalizing functions as a very promising topic to bridge psychopathology and neurobiological foundations of mental disorders. However, the high diversity of existing observations in mentalizing research calls for a structured assessment of functional mentalizing subdomains. A notable problem is the overlap of functional systems involved in mentalizing and emotion processing. A proposed solution is to conceptualize mentalizing functions due to their content (visuospatial vs. emotional) perspective and substrates (cognitive or explicit signals). This conceptual organization is mirrored in functional imaging experiments dissociating anteromedial and posterolateral brain regions, especially the involvement of the medial prefrontal cortex in mentalizing emotions and the temporoparietal cortex in visuospatial perspective taking. The present state and perspectives of mentalizing research are demonstrated in two major fields of mental disorders, depression and schizophrenia. In depression the existent contradictory findings demand a control of cognitive impairments, which are frequently associated with depressive disorders. In schizophrenia there is already consistent evidence that defines mentalizing functions as promising endophenotype, which can possibly link psychopathology to its neurobiological foundations.

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“…Although to date there has been a great deal of research regarding the neural bases of empathy, they mostly focused on some specific brain regions and rarely explored from the level of functional connectivity between large-scale networks (Bernhardt and Singer, 2012;Zaki and Ochsner, 2012). A large body of evidence has suggested that the DMN plays an important role in empathy (Spreng et al, 2009;Schnell et al, 2011;Bernhardt and Singer, 2012). Some core regions in the FPC have also been reported to be involved in empathy, including the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, right temporoparietal junction, anterior insula and supplementary motor area (Corbetta et al, 2008;Fan et al, 2011;Bernhardt and Singer, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Competition between frontoparietal control and default networks supports social working memory and empathy

Xin

Lei

2015

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience

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An extensive body of literature has indicated that there is increased activity in the frontoparietal control network (FPC) and decreased activity in the default mode network (DMN) during working memory (WM) tasks. The FPC and DMN operate in a competitive relationship during tasks requiring externally directed attention. However, the association between this FPC-DMN competition and performance in social WM tasks has rarely been reported in previous studies. To investigate this question, we measured FPC-DMN connectivity during resting state and two emotional face recognition WM tasks using the 2-back paradigm. Thirty-four individuals were instructed to perform the tasks based on either the expression [emotion (EMO)] or the identity (ID) of the same set of face stimuli. Consistent with previous studies, an increased anti-correlation between the FPC and DMN was observed during both tasks relative to the resting state. Specifically, this anti-correlation during the EMO task was stronger than during the ID task, as the former has a higher social load. Intriguingly, individual differences in self-reported empathy were significantly correlated with the FPC-DMN anti-correlation in the EMO task. These results indicate that the top-down signals from the FPC suppress the DMN to support social WM and empathy.

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Functional relations of empathy and mentalizing: An fMRI study on the neural basis of cognitive empathy

Cited by 196 publications

References 59 publications

On the Persuasiveness of Similar Others: The Role of Mentalizing and the Feeling of Certainty

On the Persuasiveness of Similar Others: The Role of Mentalizing and the Feeling of Certainty

Mentalizing Functions Provide a Conceptual Link of Brain Function and Social Cognition in Major Mental Disorders

Competition between frontoparietal control and default networks supports social working memory and empathy

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