A neurobehavioral evolutionary perspective on the mechanisms underlying empathy

Decety, Jean; Norman, Greg J.; Berntson, Gary G.; Cacioppo, John T.

doi:10.1016/j.pneurobio.2012.05.001

Cited by 224 publications

(177 citation statements)

References 95 publications

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“…The rationale for the existence of these "windows" can; on the one hand, be associated with the development of neural empathy studies (functional neuroimaging) have found that affective, cognitive and regulatory components of empathy show an interaction of neural circuits [38], "...mediated by bidirectional connections between the brain stem, the amygdala and the sensory cortex, as well as connections to the hypothalamus, insula and somatosensory cortex" [39] [40] and, furthermore, the theory of mind and the theory of mirror neurons, which attempt to explain the origin of empathy, theories adequately clarified by Howard et al [21] and do not need to be repeated at length in this paper. The first theory provides the ability to hypothesize about feelings and thoughts, and thereby, interpret the behavior of a subject.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, as many authors have discussed, the role of empathy, as part of medical education [38] in general, and in dentistry, in particular, is less clear [21] [45]. There are researchers who disagree with the fact that empathy can change with the educational intervention [5] [46], while other authors suggest that empathy can be learned and that doctor-patient relationship, the medical ability to help relieve pain, possessing medical knowledge to help, the doctor in a hierarchical position relative to the patient are aspects that seem to be learned [5] [47] [48].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Levels of Empathy among Dental Students in Five Chilean Universities

Díaz-Narváez¹,

Núñez²,

Carrasco³

et al. 2016

Health

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Aim: To compare empathic levels among dental students of five Dental Faculties in Chile. Material and Methods: Empathic orientation of dental students was measured using the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy, the Spanish version for students (S version), validated in Chile and culturally adapted to dental students. The data were compared using analysis of variance trifactorial (model III) and by a discriminant analysis. Results: It was found that differences exist between universities empathic orientation, courses, and gender. Conclusions: The results showed a great variability of empathetic guidance values on the factors studied. Discriminant test confirm the similarity and differences found among faculties from the data matrix provided by the scale used. It is not possible in this investigation to explain the variability found. * Corresponding author.V. P. Díaz-Narváez et al. 33

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Levels of Empathy among Dental Students in Five Chilean Universities

Díaz-Narváez¹,

Núñez²,

Carrasco³

et al. 2016

Health

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…These new studies in social neuroscience suggest that intergroup biases in empathy can be due to any of the multiple processes that comprise empathy [47]: perception-action coupling, shared representations of emotion states, and perspective taking/Theory of Mind [48,49]. This approach has even been applied to a study of empathy towards robots as outgroup members [50].…”

Section: How Does the Brain Produce Intergroup Empathy?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of empathy in intergroup relations

Vanman

2016

Current Opinion in Psychology

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“…Empathy, a basic prosocial behavior, reflects the natural ability to feel, understand, and share the emotional states of others and is generally divided into emotional (affective) empathy and cognitive empathy [54][55][56][57][58]. Experimental human and animal studies have demonstrated that observing intimates in pain (cagemates for animals) heightens an individual's pain perception, referred to as empathy for pain [15,54,[59][60][61][62][63].…”

Section: Does Mpfc Mediate Ethanol-induced Emotional Empathy?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethanol Increases Mechanical Pain Sensitivity in Rats via Activation of GABAA Receptors in Medial Prefrontal Cortex

Geng

Wang

et al. 2016

Neurosci. Bull.

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Ethanol is widely known for its ability to cause dramatic changes in emotion, social cognition, and behavior following systemic administration in humans. Human neuroimaging studies suggest that alcohol dependence and chronic pain may share common mechanisms through amygdala-medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) interactions. However, whether acute administration of ethanol in the mPFC can modulate pain perception is unknown. Here we showed that bilateral microinjections of ethanol into the prelimbic and infralimbic areas of the mPFC lowered the bilateral mechanical pain threshold for 48 h without influencing thermal pain sensitivity in adult rats. However, bilateral microinjections of artificial cerebrospinal fluid into the mPFC or bilateral microinjections of ethanol into the dorsolateral PFC (also termed as motor cortex area 1 in Paxinos and Watson's atlas of The Rat Brain. Elsevier Academic Press, Amsterdam, 2005) failed to do so, suggesting regional selectivity of the effects of ethanol. Moreover, bilateral microinjections of ethanol did not change the expression of either pro-apoptotic (caspase-3 and Bax) or anti-apoptotic (Bcl-2) proteins, suggesting that the dose was safe and validating the method used in the current study. To determine whether c-aminobutyric acid A (GABA A ) receptors are involved in mediating the ethanol effects, muscimol, a selective GABA A receptor agonist, or bicuculline, a selective GABA A receptor antagonist, was administered alone or co-administered with ethanol through the same route into the bilateral mPFC. The results showed that muscimol mimicked the effects of ethanol while bicuculline completely reversed the effects of ethanol and muscimol. In conclusion, ethanol increases mechanical pain sensitivity through activation of GABA A receptors in the mPFC of rats.

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A neurobehavioral evolutionary perspective on the mechanisms underlying empathy

Cited by 224 publications

References 95 publications

Levels of Empathy among Dental Students in Five Chilean Universities

Levels of Empathy among Dental Students in Five Chilean Universities

The role of empathy in intergroup relations

Ethanol Increases Mechanical Pain Sensitivity in Rats via Activation of GABAA Receptors in Medial Prefrontal Cortex

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