Empathy is known as the ability to share and understand someone else’s feelings. Previous research has either addressed the neural correlates of empathy for pain or social exclusion, but no study has examined empathy for physical and psychological (social) pain simultaneously. Forty-seven participants completed our novel “Social Interaction Empathy Task” during electroencephalogram (EEG) recording. Participants had to observe and rate the intensity of physical and psychological pain in social interactions from a first- and third-person perspective. At the behavioral level, subjects did not differentiate between the perspectives and rated physically painful scenarios as more painful than psychologically painful and neutral interactions. Psychologically painful pictures were also rated as more painful than neutral pictures. Analysis of event-related potentials (ERPs) revealed an early and a late response with a higher ERP response to physical and psychological pain compared to neutral interactions. Moreover, a significant difference emerged between the two dimensions of painful interactions. Furthermore, we found that the activity over frontal regions for discrimination of painful interactions was lateralized to the right hemisphere. Moreover, we detected significant correlations with the self-rated perspective taking ability. This suggests the psychological and physical pain qualities are processed differently but both are related to empathic traits. We further suggest that the right hemisphere may be specifically involved in the processing of empathy-related tasks.

中文翻译：

---

身体和心理疼痛的移情与神经相关

同理心可以分享和理解他人的感受。先前的研究要么解决了移情对疼痛或社会排斥的神经相关性，但没有研究同时检查移情对身体和心理（社会）疼痛的影响。47名参与者在脑电图（EEG）记录期间完成了我们新颖的“社交互动移情任务”。参与者必须从第一人称和第三人称视角观察并评价社交互动中身体和心理的痛苦程度。在行为水平上，受试者没有区分观点，并且没有将生理上痛苦的情况定为比心理上痛苦的和中立的相互作用更痛苦。心理上痛苦的图片也被评为比中性图片更痛苦。对事件相关电位（ERP）的分析显示，与中性互动相比，ERP对身体和心理疼痛的反应更高，反应较早和较晚。此外，痛苦的互动的两个维度之间出现了显着差异。此外，我们发现在额叶区域上用于区分疼痛性相互作用的活动被偏向右半球。此外，我们检测到与自评观点拍摄能力之间的显着相关性。这表明心理和身体疼痛质量的处理方式不同，但两者均与移情特征有关。我们进一步建议，右半球可能专门参与与移情有关的任务的处理。