Study on empathetic-pain perception in brain induced by three levels of empathetic-pain perception stimuli

Abstract

Empathetic-pain perception is a divergence from empathy which is a pain perceived as a reflection of perception from others. The study of empathetic-pain perception and empathy were always related with psychological disorder effecting social and humanity values. The process involved in empathetic-pain perception formations in brain were believed to be different if induced by different level of empathetic-pain perception stimuli. Therefore, this paper was aimed to study the processes involved in empathetic-pain perception formation by revealing the activation-time intervals and source location of the highest empathetic-pain perception intensity. This study conducted an experiment to induce empathetic-pain perception on 16 participants using still pictures as visual-stimuli. Electroencephalograph (EEG) recorded brain signal of the participants during the visual-stimuli presentations while the EEG signal were analysed using MATLAB® toolbox, EEGLAB. Time/frequency decomposition in EEGLAB produces ERSP images which determines the activation-time intervals for empathetic-pain perception and, by performing source localization within the activation-time intervals using sLORETA, the source locations for most active processes in empathetic-pain perception were determined. The processes involved in empathetic-pain perception formation in every level were ‘stimuli-learning’ and ‘memory-reconstructions’ by Posterior Cingulate BA 30, pain-regulation by either Postcentral Gyrus BA 2, Cingulate Gyrus BA 24 or both, and visual-stimuli and visual-memory processing by Lingual Gyrus at almost similar time intervals. However, the processes were also performed by various brain areas to either perform attention-sustain process while managed working memory and self-control regulation by Middle Frontal Gyrus BA 46, mirror-neurons activation while processed attention information and emotions by Inferior Parietal Lobule BA 40, multisensory integration by Superior Temporal Gyrus BA 22, or motor-neurons activation to control the skeletal system respectively in every level by Paracentral Lobule BA 6 and Precentral Gyrus BA44. In conclusion, the empathetic-pain perception formation process discovery were necessary to differentiate every affectional level of the empathetic-pain perception.