Cry for her or cry with her: context-dependent dissociation of two modes of cinematic empathy reflected in network cohesion dynamics

Abstract

Two empathy-related processes were recently distinguished neuroscientifically: automatic embodied-simulation (ES) based on visceromotor representation of another's affective state via cingulo-insulary circuit, and emotional sharing relying on cognitive 'theory of mind' (ToM) via prefrontal-temporo-parietal circuit. Evidence that these regions are not only activated but also function as networks during empathic experience has yet to been shown. Employing a novel approach by analyzing fMRI fluctuations of network cohesion while viewing films portraying personal loss, this study demonstrates increased connectivity during empathic engagement (probed by behavioral and parasympathetic indices) both within these circuits, and between them and a set of limbic regions. Notably, this effect was context-dependent: when witnessing as a determined-loss presented as a future event, the ToM and ToM-limbic cohesion positively correlated with state- and empathy indices. During the dramatic peak of this condition, the ToM cohesion was positively correlated with the trait-empathy index of personal distress. However, when the loss was presented as a probabilistic real-time occurrence, ToM cohesion negatively correlated with state-empathy index, which positively correlated with ES-limbic cohesion. In this case, it was the ES-limbic cohesion during the emotional peak which was correlated with personal distress scores. The findings indicate a dichotomy between regulated empathy toward determined-loss and vicarious empathy toward a real-time occurrence.

Functional connectivity dynamics during film viewing reveal common networks for different emotional experiences

“…To compute the NCIs (Raz et al, 2014;Raz et al, 2012), the BOLD signal was first extracted for each node within each network (the dorsal salience, ventral salience, medial amygdala, ventrolateral amygdala, and dorsal amygdala networks) using a Gaussian mask with a 3-mm radius around the seed coordinates. Pearson correlations between the signals of all pairs of crossnetwork nodes were then computed in sliding 30-s (ten TRs) time windows.…”

“…The dorsal amygdala network was found to spatially overlap with both the ventral and dorsal salience networks, and therefore the cross-network NCIs for these networks were excluded from analysis. Before comparing the emotional rating and the NCIs, we excluded an interval whose duration was seven TRs (approximately the span of hemodynamic response) from the onset of each of the time series, to minimize the effect of novelty related to the change between the rest and movie conditions (Raz et al, 2014;Raz et al, 2012). The rating time series were preprocessed so that their length would fit the length of the NCI series.…”

“…To control for the possibility that the association between the rating and the NCI results from a nonspecific source (e.g., head motions or other whole-brain physiological noise), a spatial bootstrapping method was employed (Raz et al, 2014;Raz et al, 2012). The sets of coordinates of the dorsal salience and medial amygdala networks were randomly translocated using translations, rotation, and mirror-flip transformations.…”

“…1) (Raz et al, 2014;Raz et al, 2012). The NCI is a sliding-window estimator of the connectivity between brain networks' nodes derived from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).…”

With love, from me to you: Embedding social interactions in affective neuroscience

“…While resonating with the ideas illustrated above and suggesting that when interacting with another person the self is directly engaged via an emotional response to that other, this mechanism may occur also when merely observing an emotionally charged scene. We have demonstrated that a measure corresponding to the cohesiveness between emotional and embodied networks when viewing a sad movie correlated with a self reported measure of sadness towards that movie (Raz et al, 2014).…”