Insula and somatosensory cortical myelination and iron markers underlie individual differences in empathy

Abstract

Empathy is a key component of our ability to engage and interact with others. In recent years, the neural mechanisms underlying affective and cognitive empathy have garnered intense interest. This work demonstrates that empathy for others depends upon a distributed network of regions such as the insula, parietal cortex, and somatosensory areas, which are also activated when we ourselves experience an empathized-with emotion (e.g., pain). Individuals vary markedly in their ability to empathize with others, which predicts the tendency to help others and relates to individual differences in the neuroanatomy of these areas. Here, we use a newly developed, high-resolution (800 μm isotropic), quantitative MRI technique to better elucidate the neuroanatomical underpinnings of individual differences in empathy. Our findings extend previous studies of the neuroanatomical correlates of cognitive and affective empathy. In particular, individual differences in cognitive empathy were associated with markers of myeloarchitectural integrity of the insular cortex, while affective empathy was predicted by a marker of iron content in second somatosensory cortex. These results indicate potential novel biomarkers of trait empathy, suggesting that microstructural features of an empathy and body-related network are crucial for understanding the mental and emotional states of others.

Linking brain structure and activation in anterior insula cortex to explain the trait empathy for pain

“…Emma Duerden et al used quantitative meta-analytic methods and found that perceiving emotions in others activated bilateral anterior insula (Duerden, Arsalidou, Lee, & Taylor, 2013). Many other studies also highlighted that the AI was a component of the core networks involved in empathy (Allen et al, 2017;Bernhardt & Singer, 2012;Chakrabarti, Bullmore, & Baron-Cohen, 2006;Jabbi, Swart, & Keysers, 2007;Lamm et al, 2011;Singer et al, 2004). Lesion study provided further evidence that the insula damage may lead to decreased affective response to and decreased withdrawal from painful stimuli.…”

Resting state functional connectivity in patients with remitted psychotic depression: A multi-centre STOP-PD study

“…Our results extend this work and suggest that the neural circuits that have been implicated in feelings have functional connectivity with the DMN and that a disorder such as psychotic depression impacts this functional connectivity. Another possibility relates to a recent quantitative MRI study that suggests insular and somatosensory cortices are responsible for processing trait behaviours associated with empathy [ 34 ]. Our study does not permit the exploration of whether the observed functional connectivity patterns specifically relate to processing feelings or empathy.…”

Quantitative MRI provides markers of intra-, inter-regional, and age-related differences in young adult cortical microstructure

“…The remaining participants ( n = 59; mean age ± SD: 23.9 ± 4.9; 32 female, 27 male) were sampled from the general population through local participant pools. These subjects took part in three experiments: one exploring the potential association between auditory perceptual abilities, musicianship, tonotopic organization and structural properties of the auditory cortex (data not reported here), one investigating the relationship of trait empathy and brain microstructure ( Allen, Frank, et al., 2017 ), and a third investigating metacognition and MPM assays ( Allen et al., 2017 ).…”