ABSTRACT

Empathy is one such social-cognitive capacity that undergoes age-related change. C urrently, however, not well understood is the structural and functional neurocircuitry underlying age-related differences in empathy. This study aimed to delineate brain structural and functional networks that subserve affective empathic response in younger and older adults using a modified version of the Multifaceted Empathy Task to both positive and negative emotions. Combining multimodal neuroimaging with multivariate partial least square analysis resulted in two novel findings in older but not younger adults: (a) faster empathic responding to negative emotions was related to greater fractional anisotropy of the anterior cingulum and greater functional activity of the anterior cingulate network; (b) however, empathic responding to positive emotions was related to greater fractional anisotropy of the posterior cingulum and greater functional activity of the posterior cingulate network. Such differentiation of structural and functional networks might have critical implications for prosocial behavior and social connections among older adults.

摘要

同理心就是这样一种社会认知能力，它会经历与年龄相关的变化。然而，目前尚不清楚与年龄相关的同理心差异背后的结构和功能神经电路。本研究旨在描述大脑结构和功能网络，这些网络有助于年轻人和老年人的情感移情反应，使用修正版的多方面移情任务来处理正面和负面情绪。将多模态神经影像学与多元偏最小二乘分析相结合，在老年人而非年轻人中发现了两个新发现：（a）对负面情绪的更快共情反应与前扣带回的更大分数各向异性和前扣带回网络的更大功能活动有关；(二)然而，对积极情绪的共情反应与更大的后扣带回分数各向异性和更大的后扣带回网络功能活动有关。这种结构和功能网络的差异可能对老年人的亲社会行为和社会联系产生重要影响。