| dc.description.abstract | Sympathy has not been not fully studied in the context of neural processes. Thanks to
new methods of brain imaging and recording, the emotions anger, disgust, desire, and
fear have been intensely studied, and new theories centered on emotion have been born
out of this research. Sympathy has been relatively untested in this field of emotional
processing, and more research is required to determine how sympathy manifests itself in
the brain, and how its functions differ in comparison to other emotions. In 2003, Decety
and Chaminade used FMRI to study how the insular cortices, anterior medial cingulate
cortex , amygdala, and visual cortices are associated with sympathy, but FMRI has
temporal limitations.
Electroencephalogram (EEG) methodology is preferred, because of its high temporal
resolution. EEG recordings were taken of 40 undergraduate college students.
Participants were shown a series of pictures of human faces; half of the pictures were
showing a neutral expression, and the other half were showing a fearful expression. The
participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions. In one condition, to
induce sympathy, participants were asked to imagine what the persons in the pictures
were experiencing. In the other condition, to induce a lowered sympathy state,
participants were asked to try to remain objective while viewing the pictures. Data from
the site P8 in the occipito-temporal area of the brain, which has been associated with
face processing in previous work by Righart and Gelder in 2008, was extracted and
analyzed at roughly 170 milliseconds after stimulus onset. Participants in a sympathetic
state showed greater brain activation to fearful faces in this brain area. These results
suggest that sympathy affects very rapid neural responses for people and may lead to
greater processing and resource allocation for them. | en |
