Empathic pain evoked by sensory and emotional-communicative cues share common and process-specific neural representations
- Clinical Hospital of Chengdu Brain Science Institute, MOE Key Laboratory for Neuroinformation, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, China
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, United States
Figures
Figure 1
Examples and behavioral ratings of the experimental stimuli.
(A) Examples of stimuli for NS and FE vicarious pain as well as corresponding non-painful control stimuli. Of note, examples of the facial expressions (FE) were not included in the original stimulus …
Figure 2
Results from the conventional univariate analyses.
(A) The NS vicarious pain activation pattern was spatially correlated with the FE vicarious pain pattern. (B) Results from the conventional univariate analysis comparing NS vicarious pain with the …
Figure 3
Results from the whole-brain multivariate pattern analyses.
(A) The NS vicarious pain-predictive pattern was spatially correlated with the FE vicarious pain-predictive pattern. (B) Scatter plot displaying normalized voxel weights for NS (y-axis) and FE …
Figure 4 with 1 supplement
Brain regions that made reliable contributions to decoding vicarious pain.
NS (A) and FE (B) vicarious pain-predictive patterns and (C) overlapping reliable predictive voxels (bootstrap thresholded at FDR q < 0.05, two-tailed). (D) Brain regions exhibiting significant …
Figure 4—figure supplement 1
Searchlight analyses with different searchlight sizes.
This figure shows the results for the analyses in which we ran searchlight analyses with (A) 4-mm-, (B) 6-mm-, and (C) 10-mm-radius spheres.
Figure 5 with 1 supplement
Results of the mid-insula focused analyses.
(A) Mid-insula activation to NS vicarious pain was highly similar to activation to FE vicarious pain. (B) NS vicarious pain-predictive pattern in the mid-insula was spatially similar to the FE …
Figure 5—figure supplement 1
The mid-insula mask used in the current study.
Figure 6
A general vicarious pain-predictive pattern which predicts both observation of noxious stimulation of body limbs and facial expressions of pain induced vicarious pain.
(A) Word cloud showing the top 50 relevant terms (excluding anatomical terms) for the meta-analytic decoding of the general vicarious pain-predictive pattern. The size of the font was scaled by …
Figure 7 with 2 supplements
Generalizability of the general (across NS and FE) vicarious pain-predictive pattern.
Both whole-brain (A) and mid-insula (B) vicarious pain-predictive patterns could accurately predict the severity and classify the levels of self-experienced pain in an independent dataset. ***p < …
Figure 7—figure supplement 1
Generalizability of the NS and FE vicarious pain-predictive patterns.
Both whole-brain (A) and mid-insula (B) vicarious pain-predictive patterns could accurately predict the severity and classify the levels of self-experienced pain in an independent dataset. NS …
Figure 7—figure supplement 2
Varying sample size predictions.
This figure depicts the results for the analysis in which we predicted thermal pain levels (A) and ratings (B) using randomly selected n = 20, 40, 80, 120, 160 and 200 subjects’ NS vicarious pain …
Tables
Key resources table
| Reagent type (species) or resource | Designation | Source or reference | Identifiers | Additional information |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Software, algorithm | Matlab R2015b | MathWorks | RRID:SCR 001622 | |
| Software, algorithm | SPM12 | Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging | RRID:SCR_007037 | |
| Software, algorithm | CANLab Core Tools | CANlab | https://github.com/canlab | |
| Other | Thermal pain data | Wager et al., 2013 | https://ndownloader.figshare.com/files/12708989 | |
| Other | Vicarious pain signatures | This paper | https://neurovault.org/collections/6332/ | Deposited multivariate patterns |
| Other | Data and codes | This paper | https://figshare.com/articles/Vicarious_pain_dataset/11994498 | Deposited fMRI data and scripts for figures |
Additional files
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Supplementary file 1
Table shows post-fMRI subjective ratings for vicarious pain evoking stimuli (Mean ± SD).
NS vicarious pain, observation of noxious stimulation of body limbs induced vicarious pain; FE vicarious pain, observation of facial expressions of pain induced vicarious pain; NS control stimuli depict body limbs in similar but innocuous situations, FE control stimuli show neutral facial expressions.
- https://cdn.elifesciences.org/articles/56929/elife-56929-supp1-v2.docx
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Transparent reporting form
- https://cdn.elifesciences.org/articles/56929/elife-56929-transrepform-v2.docx
