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Empathy

Empathy

Some researchers suggest that altruism operates on empathy. Empathy is the capacity to understand another person’s perspective, to feel what he or she feels. An empathetic person makes an emotional connection with others and feels compelled to help (Batson, 1991). Empathy can be expressed in several ways, including cognitive, affective, and motor.

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Updated: Jun 27, 2026

Brain Imaging Investigation of the Neural Correlates of Emotional Autobiographical Recollection

Brain Imaging Investigation of the Neural Correlates of Emotional Autobiographical Recollection

Published on: August 26, 2011

Altered empathy processing in frontotemporal dementia A task-based fMRI study.

Olof Lindberg¹, Tie-Qiang Li^2,3, Cecilia Lind⁴

¹Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Karolinska Institute, Division of Clinical Geriatrics, Centre for Alzheimer Research, Neo, 14183 Huddinge, Sweden.

Biorxiv : the Preprint Server for Biology

|April 8, 2024

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) patients show reduced neural activity in empathy regions, impacting affective empathy. This neural difference is linked to empathy deficits in bvFTD, contrasting with healthy controls.

Keywords:

Empathic concern Empathy Frontotemporal dementia Functional MRI

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Last Updated: Jun 27, 2026

Brain Imaging Investigation of the Neural Correlates of Emotional Autobiographical Recollection

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Published on: August 26, 2011

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Cognitive Psychology
Neurology

Background:

Reduced empathy, particularly affective empathy, is a hallmark symptom of behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD).
Empathy for pain (EFP) paradigms using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) reveal blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal changes in brain regions affected by bvFTD, such as the anterior insula and cingulate cortex.

Approach:

This study investigated empathy processing in 28 bvFTD patients and 28 controls using an established EFP fMRI paradigm.
Participants underwent structural MRI, task-based fMRI, and resting-state fMRI, alongside the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) for empathic function assessment.
Analyses included whole-brain and region-of-interest approaches, focusing on affective versus cognitive empathy networks.

Key Points:

Healthy controls exhibited increased BOLD signal in EFP-related regions overlapping bvFTD atrophy areas (insula, anterior cingulate), along with the supramarginal gyrus and occipital cortex.
bvFTD patients showed increased BOLD signal only in the supramarginal gyrus and occipital cortex, with significantly less activation than controls in affective empathy regions.
Control empathic concern scores correlated with EFP-related BOLD signals, unlike bvFTD patients or other IRI subscales.

Conclusions:

bvFTD is associated with reduced neural activity in key empathy processing regions, correlating with diminished affective empathy capacity.
Resting-state fMRI revealed altered connectivity in empathy networks, particularly the ventral attention network, in bvFTD patients compared to controls.
These findings highlight neural underpinnings of empathy deficits in bvFTD and their relationship to disease pathology.