The neural correlates of narrative empathy a functional magnetic resonance imaging study

Abstract

Empathy entails the ability to understand and share the affective experiences of others, both processes considered the bedrock of all social interactions and critical for survival. The initial studies informed how one understands pieces of the whole system with an assumption that when information from the pieces is fit the whole picture can be realized but this methodology has led to constrained theories on empathy process. Hence with the goal to mimic real-life situations that evoke empathy, naturalistic paradigms are recent inclusions building upon the foundation provided by the earlier simple models. This study focuses specifically on narratives and empathy response. The aim of this study is to explore the neural correlates of narrative empathy using multi-modal visual movie narrative. Towards this, two functional magnetic resonance imaging studies were conducted using a total of 5 commercial full-length short film and movie clips. Developing on the findings from the first study, a second fMRI study was designed to understand specifically the role of context in empathy response. Toward this, two diverse full-length short movies with real-life actors of ethnicity dissimilar to the participants were selected as stimuli. Functional imaging data was collected from two sets of extremely short clips with neutral and emotional scenes extracted from the full-length movie followed by the whole movie. Using a general linear model approach for data analysis, the contrasts estimated from each condition were compared and the analysis showed that empathy sub-processes were statistically significant when context is presented. Overall, the neural correlates of narrative empathy, the first of the kind, suggest that a complex construct such as empathy should be best studied in with ecologically valid stimuli. The impact of the results, in studying empathy deficiency and interventions using narratives to enhance empathy, needs to be explored in the future.