Empathy for pain and prosocial behaviour

In this work, we explored the neurocorrelate of prosocial behaviour and empathy for pain, with specific attention to the functional relevance of the vicarious activity.
Prosocial behaviour is an extremely important aspect of human social life. Research suggests that this behaviour is motivated by ‘feeling with/for the other’. In this process, one’s own pain brain network is vicariously activated to represent the other’s distress, allowing for a direct understanding of the pain. Across experiments, we used a combination of neuroimaging (EEG and fMRI) and brain stimulation (TMS and HD-tDCS) techniques to provide evidence that the brain areas involved in feeling pain are necessary for understanding pain, and the information is crucial to tie ones helping to the level of pain experienced by another. We confirmed that the Anterior Insula, one of the regions traditionally associated with pain perception, shows a pattern of activity common to experience and observation of pain, linearly modulated by the intensity, not active for stimuli not depicting pain, and independent of how the pain was inflicted.
Taken together, these results provide new insights into the relationship between vicarious activation and prosocial behaviour and the functional meaning of this kind of brain activity. Moreover, they provide an opportunity to reflect on how different techniques affect the development of knowledge.