A novel approach to measure brain-to-brain spatial and temporal alignment during positive empathy

  • Empathy is defined as the ability to vicariously experience others’ suffering (vicarious pain) or feeling their joy (vicarious reward). While most neuroimaging studies have focused on vicarious pain and describe similar neural responses during the observed and the personal negative affective involvement, only initial evidence has been reported for the neural responses to others’ rewards and positive empathy. Here, we propose a novel approach, based on the simultaneous recording of multi-subject EEG signals and exploiting the wavelet coherence decomposition to measure the temporal alignment between ERPs in a dyad of interacting subjects. We used the Third-Party Punishment (TPP) paradigm to elicit the personal and vicarious experiences. During a positive experience, we observed the simultaneous presence in both agents of the Late Positive Potential (LPP), an ERP component related to emotion processing, as well as the existence of an inter-subject ERPs synchronization in the related time window. Moreover, the amplitude of the LPP synchronization was modulated by the presence of a human-agent. Finally, the localized brain circuits subtending the ERP-synchronization correspond to key-regions of personal and vicarious reward. Our findings suggest that the temporal and spatial ERPs alignment might be a novel and direct proxy measure of empathy.

Download full text files

Export metadata

Additional Services

Share in Twitter Search Google Scholar
Metadaten
Author:Jlenia ToppiORCiD, Michael SiniatchkinORCiDGND, Pascal VogelGND, Christine M. FreitagORCiDGND, Laura AstolfiORCiD, Angela CiaramidaroORCiDGND
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-826551
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-18911-4
ISSN:2045-2322
Parent Title (English):Scientific Reports
Publisher:Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature
Place of publication:London
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Date of Publication (online):2022/10/14
Date of first Publication:2022/10/14
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2024/05/14
Volume:12
Issue:Article number: 17282
Article Number:17282
Page Number:12
Institutes:Medizin
Dewey Decimal Classification:6 Technik, Medizin, angewandte Wissenschaften / 61 Medizin und Gesundheit / 610 Medizin und Gesundheit
Sammlungen:Universitätspublikationen
Licence (German):License LogoCreative Commons - Namensnennung 4.0