ERP indicators of situational empathy pain

Abstract

This study aimed to validate a recent conceptualization proposed by Coll and colleagues (2017a) that defines empathic response as a situational, cognitively complex process requiring emotion identification and affective sharing. Sixty right-handed women university students (18-29 years) voluntarily participated in the study. We measured ratings for empathy pain to assess the individual differences in empathy. At the same time, we collected peak amplitudes of the event-related potentials (ERPs) components to empathic stimulations of painful faces or hand stimuli and neutral images. Electrophysiological results proved that the P2, N170, N2, and P3 ERP components were associated with the modulation of empathic responses. Participants with low empathic responses (p < 0.05) disclosed a larger frontal central N2 for the painful hands than for painful faces (p < .05) and a reduced temporoparietal N170 for painful hands compared to neutral ones. Furthermore, our results highlighted higher frontal central P3a and P3b to painful stimuli than controls (p ≤ 0.01). We explained these findings assuming that in identifying the emotional value of a stimulus, the emotional content can modulate the reorientation of attention and the in-memory updating process associated with the empathic response. Results are in line with Coll and colleagues' conceptualization of the empathic response that includes two cognitive processes, the identification of emotions, and affective sharing, related to the recognition of the emotional state of the other in the self.

Keywords: Affective Sharing; Emotion Identification; N170; N2; P2; P3; Situational Empathy Pain.