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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 24, 2026

Observational Fear as a Model of Affective Empathy in Mice

Observational Fear as a Model of Affective Empathy in Mice

Published on: November 22, 2024

Interoceptive awareness enhances neural activity during empathy.

Jutta Ernst¹, Georg Northoff, Heinz Böker

¹Clinic for Affective Disorders and General Psychiatry, Psychiatric University Hospital Zurich, 8032 Zurich, Switzerland.

Human Brain Mapping

|February 24, 2012

Summary

Interoceptive awareness, focusing on bodily sensations, enhances brain activity during empathy. This finding suggests that paying attention to internal bodily states is crucial for developing empathy.

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Psychology
Cognitive Science

Background:

Empathy is a complex function with affective and cognitive elements.
Interoception, or awareness of internal bodily states, may influence empathy, but this link is not well-understood.
Previous research has not behaviorally or neurophysiologically examined the impact of interoception on empathy.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate how interoceptive awareness modulates neural activity during empathy.
To explore the sequential interaction between interoception and empathy.

Main Methods:

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used in 18 healthy subjects.
Participants underwent a period of interoceptive awareness followed by an empathy task.
Neural activity was measured during both phases to assess their interaction.

Main Results:

A preceding period of interoceptive awareness significantly enhanced neural activity during the empathy task.
This enhancement was observed in bilateral anterior insula and cortical midline regions.
These regions are involved in both interoception and empathy networks.

Conclusions:

Interoceptive awareness plays a significant role in modulating neural activity associated with empathy.
The findings suggest a close neurophysiological relationship between interoception and empathy.
Interoception appears to be implicated in the process of generating empathic responses.