Dataset Information

Neural correlates of empathic accuracy in adolescence.

ABSTRACT: Empathy, the ability to understand others' emotions, can occur through perspective taking and experience sharing. Neural systems active when adults empathize include regions underlying perspective taking (e.g. medial prefrontal cortex; MPFC) and experience sharing (e.g. inferior parietal lobule; IPL). It is unknown whether adolescents utilize networks implicated in both experience sharing and perspective taking when accurately empathizing. This question is critical given the importance of accurately understanding others' emotions for developing and maintaining adaptive peer relationships during adolescence. We extend the literature on empathy in adolescence by determining the neural basis of empathic accuracy, a behavioral assay of empathy that does not bias participants toward the exclusive use of perspective taking or experience sharing. Participants (N?=?155, aged 11.1-15.5?years) watched videos of 'targets' describing emotional events and continuously rated the targets' emotions during functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning. Empathic accuracy related to activation in regions underlying perspective taking (MPFC, temporoparietal junction and superior temporal sulcus), while activation in regions underlying experience sharing (IPL, anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula) related to lower empathic accuracy. These results provide novel insight into the neural basis of empathic accuracy in adolescence and suggest that perspective taking processes may be effective for increasing empathy.

SUBMITTER: Kral TRA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5714170 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Neural correlates of empathic accuracy in adolescence.

Kral Tammi R A TRA Solis Enrique E Mumford Jeanette A JA Schuyler Brianna S BS Flook Lisa L Rifken Katharine K Patsenko Elena G EG Davidson Richard J RJ

Social cognitive and affective neuroscience 20171101 11

Empathy, the ability to understand others' emotions, can occur through perspective taking and experience sharing. Neural systems active when adults empathize include regions underlying perspective taking (e.g. medial prefrontal cortex; MPFC) and experience sharing (e.g. inferior parietal lobule; IPL). It is unknown whether adolescents utilize networks implicated in both experience sharing and perspective taking when accurately empathizing. This question is critical given the importance of accura ...[more]

PMID: 28981837

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Project description:BACKGROUND:Rates of adolescent obesity and overweight are high. The offspring of overweight parents are at increased risk of becoming obese later in life. Investigating neural correlates of familial obesity risk and current overweight status in adolescence could help identify biomarkers that predict future obesity and that may serve as novel targets for obesity interventions. OBJECTIVE:Our primary aim was to use functional MRI to compare neural responses to words denoting high or low energy density (ED) foods and non-foods, in currently lean adolescents at higher compared with lower familial risk for obesity, and in overweight compared with lean adolescents. Secondary aims were to assess group differences in subjective appetite when viewing food and non-food words, and in objective ad libitum intake of high-ED foods in a laboratory setting. DESIGN:We recruited 36 adolescents (14-19y), of whom 10 were (obese/overweight "overweight"), 16 lean with obese/overweight mothers (lean high-risk, "lean-HR"), and 10 lean with lean mothers (lean low-risk, "lean-LR"). All underwent fMRI scanning while they viewed words representing high-ED foods, low-ED foods, or non-foods, and provided appetitive ratings in response to each word stimulus. They then consumed a multi-item ad libitum buffet meal. RESULTS:Food compared with non-food words activated a distributed emotion/reward system including insula and pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Participants who were at increasing risk for obesity exhibited progressively weaker activation of an attentional/regulatory system including dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC), dorsal ACC, and basal ganglia nuclei (activation was greatest in lean-LR, intermediate in lean-HR, and weakest in the overweight group). These group differences were most apparent for neural responses to high-compared with low-ED foods. Lean-HR (compared with lean-LR and overweight) adolescents reported greater desire for high-ED foods. Meal intake was greatest for the overweight, then lean-HR, then lean-LR groups. CONCLUSIONS:Adolescents at higher obesity risk exhibited reduced neural responses to high-ED food cues in a neural system that subserves attention and self-regulation. They also reported heightened appetitive responses to high-ED cues. Interventions that promote the capacity for self-regulation could prevent youth who have a familial predisposition for obesity from translating risk into reality.

Dataset Information

Neural correlates of empathic accuracy in adolescence.

Publications

Neural correlates of empathic accuracy in adolescence.

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