Influence of empathetic pain processing on cognition in schizophrenia

Abstract

Deficits in both empathy and cognition have been reported widely in patients with schizophrenia. However, little is known about how these deficits interact among such patients. In the present study, we used pain portraying pictures preceding a color-word Stroop task to investigate the effect of empathetic pain observation on cognition among patients with schizophrenia. Twenty patients with schizophrenia and twenty healthy controls were included. The control group showed increased Stroop facilitation and decreased interference during the empathetic pain condition compared with the non-empathetic condition. Although patients with schizophrenia exhibited deficits in cognition, they demonstrated a similar empathy effect to controls on Stroop facilitation, but a somewhat larger empathy effect on Stroop interference (a more decreased effect). In particular, the groups did not differ in either automatic or controlled processing during the non-empathetic condition, suggesting general rather than specific cognitive deficits in schizophrenia. Together, we interpret our findings in terms of two opposing effects of empathy on cognition in schizophrenia, with possible neuromodulatory mechanism. Whereas prior studies showed empathy to be impaired, our outcomes indicate that at least some components of empathetic pain processing are preserved in such patients.

Two systems for empathy in obsessive-compulsive disorder: mentalizing and experience sharing

“…32,33,38 The BES comprises 20 items, which are scored by participants on a five-point Likert-type scale (1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree). In the two-factor model, 32 nine items assess cognitive empathy (items 3,6,9,10,12,14,16,19,20), and 11 items assess affective empathy (items 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 13, 15, 17, and 18). In the two-factor conceptualization, the BES included seven reversed items, and scores could range from 20 (empathy deficit) to 100 (high level of empathy).…”

“…Experience sharing is the tendency to take on, resonate with, or ''share'' the emotions of others, and it is often tied to a mechanism known as ''neural resonance.'' 10 Several neuropsychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia, 13,20,21 autism spectrum disorders, 11,[22][23][24][25] psychopathy, 26 brain injury, 27 and frontotemporal lobe degeneration, 28 feature different subprocesses of empathy deficits. 13 Accordingly, assessment of the recognition and processing of emotion in individuals with OCD would provide a more comprehensive evaluation of these subjects and could explain many social and interpersonal aspects of their disease.…”

Negative symptoms and therapy strategies in schizophrenia

“…However, these deficits were not associated with alterations in social motivation. Since only little is known about the interaction of deficits in empathy and cognition in schizophrenia, Hu et al [8] investigated effects of empathetic pain observation on cognition in schizophrenia patients. The group of healthy controls showed increased Stroop facilitation and decreased interference during the empathetic pain condition compared with the non-empathetic condition.…”