Empathy and Judging Other's Pain: An fMRI Study of Alexithymia

Because awareness of emotional states in the self is a prerequisite to recognizing such states in others, alexithymia (ALEX), difficulty in identifying and expressing one's own emotional states, should involve impairment in empathy. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we compare...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. 1991) N.Y. 1991), 2007-09, Vol.17 (9), p.2223-2234
Main Authors: Moriguchi, Yoshiya, Decety, Jean, Ohnishi, Takashi, Maeda, Motonari, Mori, Takeyuki, Nemoto, Kiyotaka, Matsuda, Hiroshi, Komaki, Gen
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Affective Symptoms - pathology
Affective Symptoms - psychology
anterior cingulate cortex
Brain Stem - physiology
Cerebrovascular Circulation
Cognition - physiology
Data Interpretation, Statistical
dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
emotion regulation
Empathy
Female
Gyrus Cinguli - physiology
Humans
Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Nerve Net - physiology
Pain - psychology
Photic Stimulation
Prefrontal Cortex - physiology
Psychological Tests
self-awareness
Somatosensory Cortex - physiology
Thalamus - physiology
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Summary:Because awareness of emotional states in the self is a prerequisite to recognizing such states in others, alexithymia (ALEX), difficulty in identifying and expressing one's own emotional states, should involve impairment in empathy. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we compared an ALEX group (n = 16) and a non-alexithymia (non-ALEX) group (n = 14) for their regional hemodynamic responses to the visual perception of pictures depicting human hands and feet in painful situations. Subjective pain ratings of the pictures and empathy-related psychological scores were also compared between the 2 groups. The ALEX group showed less cerebral activation in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), the dorsal pons, the cerebellum, and the left caudal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) within the pain matrix. The ALEX group showed greater activation in the right insula and inferior frontal gyrus. Furthermore, alexithymic participants scored lower on the pain ratings and on the scores related to mature empathy. In conclusion, the hypofunction in the DLPFC, brain stem, cerebellum, and ACC and the lower pain-rating and empathy-related scores in ALEX are related to cognitive impairments, particularly executive and regulatory aspects, of emotional processing and support the importance of self-awareness in empathy.
ISSN:1047-3211
1460-2199
DOI:10.1093/cercor/bhl130