Is Empathy for Pain Unique in Its Neural Correlates? A Meta-Analysis of Neuroimaging Studies of Empathy.

ABSTRACT: Empathy is an essential component of our social lives, allowing us to understand and share other people's affective and sensory states, including pain. Evidence suggests a core neural network-including anterior insula (AI) and mid-cingulate cortex (MCC)-is involved in empathy for pain. However, a similar network is associated to empathy for non-pain affective states, raising the question whether empathy for pain is unique in its neural correlates. Furthermore, it is yet unclear whether neural correlates converge across different stimuli and paradigms that evoke pain-empathy. We performed a coordinate-based activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis to identify neural correlates of empathy, assess commonalities and differences between empathy for pain and for non-pain negative aff

SUBMITTER: Timmers I 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6277791 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature