Delineating the neural basis of cognitive and affective empathy in adult women during a novel facial assessment and observation task

Abstract

Empathy is vital for communication and survival in social environments. Empathy consists of cognitive (cognitive empathy) and affective (affective empathy) components, which complement each other in deploying empathic functions. In this study, we investigated the differences between the neural basis of cognitive and affective empathy using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Our cohort of 16 healthy adult women was required to passively observe (Affective Task: AT) and assess (Cognitive Task: CT) images of different faces that evoke positive emotions, whilst undergoing MRI. We found heightened activation of the bilateral inferior parietal lobules during the AT compared to the CT. Conversely, we detected heighted activation of the left inferior frontal gyrus during the CT compared to the AT. In summary, our results suggest that affective empathy is associated with reproducing the mental states of others, and that cognitive empathy integrates the neural activity required to infer the meaning of facial expressions. Both the inferior parietal lobule and the inferior frontal gyrus are part of the mirror neuron system: these brain regions have a proposed involvement in empathy. Here we found that different brain regions in the mirror neuron system are associated with affective and cognitive empathy, respectively.