The neuronal basis of empathy and fairness

The emerging fields of social neuroscience and neuroeconomics have started to investigate the neural foundations of empathy and fairness. Even though not frequently linked, both concepts point to humans as altruistic beings who care for others. Recently social neuroscientists have measured brain activity associated with different empathic processes and revealed common neural responses when feeling sensations such as disgust, touch or pain in ourselves, and when perceiving someone else being disgusted, touched or in pain. At the same time, research in neuroeconomics has used game theoretical paradigms to study our sense of fairness. Several functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies show involvement of anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex in response to unfair compared with fair offers during such monetary exchange games. Interestingly, the same brain regions are also involved in empathy for pain or disgust of others. More generally, anterior insula cortex is suggested to subserve neural representations of feeling and bodily states in the self and may play a crucial role for the emergence of social emotions related to others.