Extraordinary Altruists Exhibit Enhanced Self-Other Overlap in Neural Responses to Distress.

ABSTRACT: Shared neural representations during experienced and observed distress are hypothesized to reflect empathic neural simulation, which may support altruism. But the correspondence between real-world altruism and shared neural representations has not been directly tested, and empathy's role in promoting altruism toward strangers has been questioned. Here, we show that individuals who have performed costly altruism (donating a kidney to a stranger; n = 25) exhibit greater self-other overlap than matched control participants ( n = 27) in neural representations of pain and threat (fearful anticipation) in anterior insula (AI) during an empathic-pain paradigm. Altruists exhibited greater self-other correspondence in pain-related activation in left AI, highlighting that group-level overlap was sup

SUBMITTER: Brethel-Haurwitz KM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6180668 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature