Greater Empathic Abilities and Their Correlation With Resting State Brain Connectivity in Psychotherapists Compared to Non-Psychotherapists

Abstract

<jats:title>ABSTRACT</jats:title><jats:p>Psychotherapists constantly regulate their own perspective and emotions to better understand the “other’s” state. We compared 52 psychotherapists with 92 non-psychotherapists to characterized psychometric constructs like, Fantasy (FS) and Perspective Taking (PT), and the emotion regulation strategy of Expressive Suppression (ES), which hampers the empathic response. Psychotherapists showed greater FS, PT and lower ES scores. In a subsample (36, 18 ea.), we did a functional connectivity (FC) study. Psychotherapists showed greater FC between the left anterior insula and the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex; and less connectivity between rostral anterior cingulate cortex and the orbito prefrontal cortex. Both associations correlated with the PT scores and suggest a cognitive regulatory effect related to the empathic response. Considering, that the psychometric differences between groups were in the cognitive domain and that the FC associations are related to cognitive processes, these results suggest that psychotherapists have a greater cognitive regulation over their empathic response.</jats:p>

The Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Presents Structural Variations Associated with Empathic Capacity in Psychotherapists

“…They also scored significantly lower on the ERQ Expressive suppression construct (p < 0.05; see Figure 1). This has been previously observed on a larger sample (Olalde-Mathieu et al 2020).…”

“…This suggests that there might be a pressure for therapists to be more empathic through continuously modulating their empathic response. The hypothesis that psychotherapists have an increased empathic capacity has been tested by some research groups, finding evidence that, even though therapists show similar levels of bottom-up emotional reactivity as nontherapists (Hassentab et al 2007; Pletzer et al 2015), they display a significantly higher cognitive empathy capacity as measured through behavioral tasks and psychometric scales (Hassentab et al 2007; Olalde-Mathieu et al 2020).…”

Asociación Mexicana de Neuropsicología. 25 años de práctica clínica e investigación

“…Esta relación sugiere que una mayor escolaridad implica mejores interacciones sociales; tal vez la escolaridad nos dota de mejores habilidades para relacionarnos socialmente. En otro estudio (Olalde- Mathieu et al, 2023), con una muestra de 163 participantes (55% mujeres) de entre 12 y 68 años, encontramos que la angustia personal, correlacionó negativamente con el volumen del hipocampo, es decir, a mayor angustia personal, menor volumen del hipocampo. Este resultado puede ser parte de la sintomatología de estrés crónico, pues la angustia es una forma de estrés social.…”