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Functional dissociation of the frontoinsular and anterior cingulate cortices in empathy for pain.

ABSTRACT: The frontoinsular cortex (FI) and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) are thought to be involved in empathy for others' pain. However, the functional roles of FI and ACC in empathetic responses have not yet been clearly dissociated in previous studies. In this study, participants viewed color photographs depicting human body parts in painful or nonpainful situations and performed either pain judgment (painful/nonpainful) or laterality judgment (left/right) of the body parts. We found that activation of FI, rather than ACC, showed significant increase for painful compared with nonpainful images, regardless of the task requirement. Our data suggest a clear functional dissociation between FI and ACC in which FI is more domain-specific than ACC when processing empathy for pain.

SUBMITTER: Gu X

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2845539 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Functional dissociation of the frontoinsular and anterior cingulate cortices in empathy for pain.

Gu Xiaosi X Liu Xun X Guise Kevin G KG Naidich Thomas P TP Hof Patrick R PR Fan Jin J

The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience 20100301 10

The frontoinsular cortex (FI) and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) are thought to be involved in empathy for others' pain. However, the functional roles of FI and ACC in empathetic responses have not yet been clearly dissociated in previous studies. In this study, participants viewed color photographs depicting human body parts in painful or nonpainful situations and performed either pain judgment (painful/nonpainful) or laterality judgment (left/right) of the body parts. We found that activa ...[more]

PMID: 20220007

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Project description:The subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC) is a key node of the descending antinociceptive system with sex differences in its functional connectivity (FC). We previously reported that, in a male-prevalent chronic pain condition, sgACC FC is abnormal in women but not in men. This raises the possibility that, within a sex, sgACC FC may be either protective or represent a vulnerability to develop a sex-dominant chronic pain condition. The aim of this study was to characterize sgACC FC in a female-dominant chronic pain condition, carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS), to investigate whether sgACC abnormalities are a common feature in women with chronic pain or unique to individuals with pain conditions that are more prevalent in the opposite sex. We used fMRI to determine the resting state FC of the sgACC in healthy controls (HCs, n = 25, 18 women; 7 men) and people with CTS before (n = 25, 18 women; 7 men) and after (n = 17, 13 women; 4 men) successful surgical treatment. We found reduced sgACC FC with the medial pre-frontal cortex (mPFC) and temporal lobe in CTS compared with HCs. The group-level sgACC-mPFC FC abnormality was driven by men with CTS, while women with CTS did not have sgACC FC abnormalities compared with healthy women. We also found that age and sex influenced sgACC FC in both CTS and HCs, with women showing greater FC with bilateral frontal poles and men showing greater FC with the parietal operculum. After surgery, there was reduced sgACC FC with the orbitofrontal cortex, striatum, and premotor areas and increased FC with the posterior insula and precuneus compared with pre-op scans. Abnormally reduced sgACC-mPFC FC in men but not women with a female-prevalent chronic pain condition suggests pain-related sgACC abnormalities may not be specific to women but rather to individuals who develop chronic pain conditions that are more dominant in the opposite sex. Our data suggest the sgACC plays a role in chronic pain in a sex-specific manner, and its communication with other regions of the dynamic pain connectome undergoes plasticity following pain-relieving treatment, supporting it as a potential therapeutic target for neuromodulation in chronic pain.

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Functional dissociation of the frontoinsular and anterior cingulate cortices in empathy for pain.

Publications

Functional dissociation of the frontoinsular and anterior cingulate cortices in empathy for pain.

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