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Association Between White Matter Tract Microstructure and Cognitive, Affective, and Somatic Empathy in Children: An
June Christoph Kang1,2,3
1School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, UK.
Purpose:
Empathy is a multidimensional construct encompassing cognitive, affective, and somatic components, yet its white matter correlates have been examined primarily in adults and typically using measures limited to cognitive and affective dimensions. This study explored associations between white matter tract microstructure and multidimensional trait empathy in typically developing children.
Methods:
Twenty-six typically developing children (14 boys, 12 girls; mean age years, observed range 7-15) underwent diffusion MRI. White matter pathways were reconstructed with TRACULA-based probabilistic tractography, and trait empathy was assessed with the Korean version of the Cognitive, Affective, and Somatic Empathy Scales (CASES-K). Along-tract general linear models with within-tract permutation-based cluster correction (5000 sign-flip permutations) tested associations between fractional anisotropy (FA) and empathy scores, controlling for age and sex.
Findings:
At within-tract correction, three clusters showed negative FA-empathy associations: lower FA in the left superior longitudinal fasciculus I (SLF1; p = 0.032) and the genu of the corpus callosum (p = 0.048) with higher total empathy, and lower FA in the left SLF3 with higher affective empathy (p = 0.020). However, no clusters survived correction across the full set of 168 tract-subscale analyses (all false-discovery-rate q ≈ 1.0), so the findings are best interpreted as exploratory and hypothesis-generating. Within these clusters, the negative FA associations coincided with higher radial diffusivity and essentially unchanged axial diffusivity, and remained after controlling for in-scanner motion.
Conclusion:
These preliminary results are consistent with the possibility that different empathy dimensions relate to partially distinct white matter pathways during childhood. They require replication in larger samples, however, before any mechanistic, maturational, or causal interpretation is warranted.
