Empathy for another person's pain and feeling pain oneself seem to be accompanied by similar or shared neural responses. Such shared responses could be achieved by mapping the bodily states of others onto our own bodily representations. We investigated whether sensorimotor neural responses to the pain of others are increased when experimentally reducing perceived bodily distinction between the self and the other. Healthy adult participants watched video clips of the hands of ethnic ingroup or outgroup members being painfully penetrated by a needle syringe or touched by a cotton swab. Manipulating the video presentation to create a visuospatial overlap between the observer's and the target's hand increased the perceived bodily self-attribution of the target's hand. For both ingroup and outgroup targets, this resulted in increased neural responses to the painful injections (compared with nonpainful contacts), as indexed by desynchronizations of central mu and beta scalp rhythms recorded using electroencephalography. Furthermore, these empathy-related neural activations were stronger in participants who reported stronger bodily self-attribution of the other person's hand. Our findings provide further evidence that empathy for pain engages sensorimotor resonance mechanisms. They also indicate that reducing bodily self-other distinction may increase such resonance for ingroup as well as outgroup targets.

中文翻译：

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自我-他人身体重叠的增加会增加对他人痛苦的感觉运动共振。

对他人痛苦的移情和感觉自己的痛苦似乎伴随着相似或共同的神经反应。可以通过将其他人的身体状态映射到我们自己的身体表示上来实现这种共享的响应。我们研究了通过实验减少自我与他人之间的身体区别时，对他人痛苦的感觉运动神经反应是否增加。健康的成人参与者观看了种族内或外族成员的手的视频剪辑，这些视频剪辑被针头针刺痛或被棉签碰到。操纵视频演示以在观察者的手和目标的手之间创建视觉空间重叠，会增加目标手的感知到的身体自我属性。对于组内和组外目标，通过使用脑电图记录的中央mu和β头皮节律的不同步性，这可导致对疼痛注射的神经反应增加（与无痛接触相比）。此外，这些与移情相关的神经激活在参与者中表现得更强，他们报告说对方的手的身体自我属性更强。我们的发现提供了进一步的证据，表明对疼痛的同情参与了感觉运动共振机制。他们还表明，减少身体自我-他人之间的区别可能会增加群体内和群体外目标的共鸣。这些与移情相关的神经激活在参与者中表现得更强，他们报告说对方的手的身体自我属性更强。我们的发现提供了进一步的证据，表明对疼痛的同情参与了感觉运动共振机制。他们还表明，减少身体自我-他人之间的区别可能会增加群体内和群体外目标的共鸣。这些与移情相关的神经激活在参与者中表现得更强，他们报告说对方的手的身体自我属性更强。我们的发现提供了进一步的证据，表明对疼痛的同情参与了感觉运动共振机制。他们还表明，减少身体自我-他人之间的区别可能会增加群体内和群体外目标的共鸣。