Neural empathy mechanisms are shared for physical and social pain, and increase from adolescence to older adulthood

Abstract

Empathy is a critical component of social interaction that enables individuals to understand and share the emotions of others. We report a preregistered experiment in which 240 participants, including adolescents, young adults, and older adults, viewed images depicting hands and feet in physically or socially painful situations (versus nonpainful). Empathy was measured using imagined pain ratings and EEG mu suppression. Imagined pain was greater for physical versus social pain, with young adults showing particular sensitivity to social pain events compared to adolescents and older adults. Mu desynchronization was greater to pain versus no-pain situations, but the physical/social context did not modulate pain responses. Brain responses to painful situations increased linearly from adolescence to young and older adulthood. These findings highlight shared activity across the core empathy network for both physical and social pain contexts, and an empathic response that develops over the lifespan with accumulating social experience.

Keywords: EEG; aging; empathy; physical and social pain; sensorimotor mirror system.

Figure 1.

Schematic trial sequence used to present stimuli in the pain rating task. Note that participants were only prompted to rate pain on 25% of trials.

Figure 2.

Pain ratings for each condition and across the age range. The plots show raw data points (averaged across trials for each participant for visualization), a quadratic line of best fit for age (orange line = no pain, blue line = pain), and the standard error around this line of best fit (grey shading).

Figure 3.

Alpha desynchronization for each electrode site and condition across the age range. The plots show raw data points (averaged across trials for each participant for visualization), a linear line of best fit for age (orange line = no pain, blue line = pain), and the standard error around this line of best fit (grey shading).

Figure 4.

Beta desynchronization for each electrode site and condition across the age range. The plots show raw data points (averaged across trials for each participant for visualization), a linear line of best fit for age (orange line = no pain, blue line = pain), and the standard error around this line of best fit (grey shading).

Figure 5.

Correlation matrix between behavioural pain ratings and mu desynchronization (alpha and beta bands), separately for physical (P) and social (S) content. Coloured cells indicate a significant correlation (P < .01), and values show the correlation coefficient (r).