Tania Singer

Affektive (Empathie und Mitgefühl) und kognitive (Theory of Mind (ToM)) neuronale Netzwerke liegen unserem Verständnis Anderer zugrunde. Inwieweit diese Netzwerke direkt trennbar sind, ob sie einander bedingen, d.h. ob hohe Empathie-Fähigkeit auch gute ToM-Fertigkeiten bedeutet, und wie sie zusammenarbeiten ist unbekannt. Im Rahmen der ReSource-Studie, einer 9-Monats-Trainings-Studie mit Modulen zu Achtsamkeit, Affekt und Perspektivübernahme sind wir sowohl diesen Fragen, als auch der differentiellen Plastizität der Netzwerke nachgegangen. Die neu-entwickelte Aufgabe ‚EmpaToM‘ konfrontiert Probanden (N=178) im fMRT mit naturalistischen Videos in denen emotionale oder neutrale Episoden berichtet werden. Auf jedes Video folgt eine Frage zum Inhalt des Videos, die entweder ToM oder logisches Schlussfolgern testet. Die Ergebnisse zeigen klare Trennbarkeit der Netzwerke, die während des Online-Verständnisses Anderer miteinander kommunizieren. Hohe Empathie-Fähigkeit geht dabei nicht automatisch mit guten ToM-Fertigkeiten einher. Besonders bedeutsam für die Psychotherapieforschung sind differentielle Effekte der verschiedenen Module, die zeigen, dass sozio-affektive und -kognitive Fähigkeiten separat trainiert werden können

Social neuroscience has identified different neural networks, a more affective (empathy and compassion) and a more cognitive route (Theory of Mind (ToM)) to the understanding of others. While the anterior insula (AI) is critically involved when empathizing with the pain of another person, experiencing compassion for another’s suffering activates a different network including the ventral striatum. ToM tasks, in contrast, engage the temporoparietal junction (TPJ), temporal poles (TP) and medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC). To study the separability and interrelations of these neural networks as well as their plasticity, we developed a novel paradigm, the EmpaToM. In the EmpaToM task, participants were presented with naturalistic video stimuli in which people recount autobiographical episodes that are either emotional or neutral. Each video is followed by empathy and compassion ratings and questions about the content of the video that probe ToM. Participants were tested before and after each training module in a 3T Scanner. At baseline, emotional vs. neutral videos increased activity in bilateral AI, which parametrically modulated with subjective empathy ratings. Compassion ratings, in contrast, covaried with activity in the ventral striatum. ToM activated bilateral TPJ, TP and MPFC. Inter-individual differences in the activity of these networks were uncorrelated, suggesting independence of these socio-affective and -cognitive abilities. Training in the Perspective, but not the Presence or Affective Module, enhanced performance in ToM questions. The compassion ratings, in contrast, increased more after the Affective and Perspective module, not so however after the Presence module. Similarly, differential change was also observed with regards to the neural networks underlying compassion and ToM. The present results confirm that the neural networks underlying empathy, compassion and ToM can be reliably identified within a single task and also demonstrate their independence on an inter-individual level – strong empathizers are not (necessarily) good mentalizers. Most critically, the training-related changes indicate that Theory of Mind can be trained by specific practices implemented in the Perspective Module. Surprisingly, there was an increase in experienced compassion after both, the Affective and the Perspective Modules. As no effect was observed after the Presence Module, which focused on attention and interoceptive awareness, the readiness to experience compassion seems to only increase after modules involving intersubjective exercises focusing on prosocial affect and motivation (Affective) or cognitive perspective taking of self and others (Perspective). In conclusion, these results provide first evidence that we can induce plasticity in socio-affective and socio-cognitive capacities through specifically designed mental training programs

Introduction: The ability to understand other people's mind and feelings encompasses different abilities such as empathy, the ability to share affective states of others, and mentalizing, the ability to attribute mental states to others. Functional neuroimaging has identified distinct substrates of both empathy and mentalizing. While for example empathizing with the pain or suffering of others consistently involves dorsal anterior insula cortex (dAI), inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), and anterior midcingulate cortex (aMCC), mentalizing relates to activity in a network including dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), posterior temporo-parietal junction (pTPJ), and superior temporal gyrus/sulcus (STG/STS). Whether this divergence is also found at the level of brain structure is unknown. Here, we employ MRI covariance analysis to jointly assess structural network substrates of individual differences in empathy and mentalizing. Methods: We studied 154 healthy participants (94 women, mean±SD age=40.5±9.5 years). We aggregated measures derived from multiple tasks (Samson et al., 2010; Klimecki et al., 2013; Kanske et al., in press) to create constructs of empathy and mentalizing. T1-weighted MRI was obtained using a 3T Siemens Verio scanner. FreeSurfer was used of generate cortical surface models and to measure cortical thickness (Fischl and Dale, 2000). Analysis was performed using SurfStat (Worsley et al., 2009). Based on intersections of task-based functional activations in the same subjects (Kanske et al., in press) and meta-analytical results (Lamm et al., 2011; Mar, 2011), we defined seeds involved in empathy (dAI, aMCC, IFG) and mentalizing pTPJ, STG/STS). We furthermore studied the right supramarginal gyrus (rSMG), a region proximal to the pTPJ that has been suggested to play a role in affective perspective taking (Silani et al., 2013). To map structural covariance networks, we correlated thickness of each seed with thickness across the entire cortical mantle. We studied the interaction between seed covariance strength and individual differences in empathy and mentalizing. Findings were corrected for multiple comparisons using random field theory. Results: We observed that individual differences in empathy and mentalizing related to the covariance of non-overlapping networks. Specifically, individuals with high empathy score had increased right dAI covariance to lateral prefrontal regions, whereas importantly, covariance of TPJ, dmPFC, STG/STS were not modulated by individual differences in empathy (Figure 1). On the other hand, individuals scoring high on mentalizing capacity had increased pTPJ and STG/STS network covariance to mPFC and TPJ (Figure 2). And again, no modulation of dAI, aMCC and IFG was observed by individual differences in mentalizing scores. Interestingly and in line with previous work, rSMG was modulated by empathy, but not mentalizing, to regions similar to the covariance network found in right dAI (Figure 3)

Social neuroscience has identified different neural networks, a more affective (empathy and compassion) and a more cognitive route (Theory of Mind (ToM)), to the understanding of others. While the anterior insula (AI) is critically involved when empathizing with the pain of another person, experiencing compassion for another’s suffering activates a different network including the ventral striatum. ToM tasks, in contrast, engage the temporoparietal junction (TPJ), temporal poles (TP) and medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC). The separability and interrelations of these two capacities and their related neural networks is, however, little understood. We, therefore, developed a novel task, the EmpaToM. Participants are presented with naturalistic video stimuli in which people recount autobiographical episodes that are either emotional or neutral. Each video is followed by empathy and compassion ratings and questions about the content of the video that probe ToM. Emotional vs. neutral videos increased activity in bilateral AI, which parametrically modulated with subjective empathy ratings. Compassion ratings, in contrast, covaried with activity in the ventral striatum. ToM activated bilateral TPJ, TP and MPFC. These two networks interact during the online understanding of others. However, inter-individual differences in the activity of these networks were uncorrelated, suggesting some independence, such that strong empathizers are not (necessarily) good mentalizers. Separate training of these capacities within the longitudinal ReSource study has differential enhancing effects on ToM performance and compassion, providing some first evidence that we can induce plasticity in socio-affective and socio-cognitive capacities

The neural networks associated with socio-affective (empathy, compassion) and socio-cognitive processes (mentalizing/Theory of Mind) have been well-characterized over the last years. The goal of the present talk is twofold: (1) To explore the separability of these functions during online social understanding on a subjective, behavioral and on a neural level and (2) to investigate the embedding of the related neural substrates in large-scale task-free neural networks. To this end, we acquired resting state as well as behavioral and neuroimaging data (fMRI) during a social video task in a large sample of participants (N = 178). The videos were short autobiographical narrations of emotionally negative and neutral events that allowed for asking Theory of Mind questions about the thoughts of the narrators and factual reasoning questions about the content of the stories, thereby allowing for independent assessment of socio-affective and socio-cognitive processing. Linking the phenomenological with the neural level, participants reported increased negative affect after emotional stories, which covaried with activity strength in the meta-analytically defined “empathy network”, but not with activity in the “Theory of Mind network”. Vice versa, performance in answering the Theory of Mind questions correlated with “Theory of Mind network”, but not “empathy network” activity. Interestingly, neither behavioral markers of social affect and mentalizing (i.e. emotional valence ratings and Theory of Mind performance) nor activity in the two respective neural networks correlated with each other. Furthermore, resting state functional connectivity to task activation based seed regions for empathy and Theory of Mind yielded distinct networks that strongly overlapped with the respective task activations and correspond to the well-described default mode network (Theory of Mind seeds) and the salience or central executive network (empathy). The data strongly argue for dissociable and independent socio-affective and -cognitive functions that are embedded in large-scale task-unrelated neural circuits

Introduction: The last decade has witnessed a growing interest in human social cognition. Social neuroscience has differentiated at least two functions and the respective neural networks that support successful interaction: a network that allows for affect sharing (empathizing) and underlies the understanding of others’ affective states and a network that enables the inference of thoughts, beliefs, and goals and underlies understanding others’ mental states (Theory of Mind (ToM)). Empathy paradigms have mainly focused on witnessing pain or suffering and have revealed increased activation in the anterior insula (AI) and the anterior midcingulate cortex (aMCC) [1]. ToM tasks typically involve inferring others’ thoughts or intentions and induce increased activation in the temporoparietal junction (TPJ), the temporal poles and the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) [2]. Although these different routes of social cognition show differential time courses during development [3] and are differentially impaired in psychopathology [4], these routes usually interact in healthy brains. So far, fMRI paradigms are lacking, which can reliably dissociate mentalizing and empathizing routes within a single person. The aim of the present study was to develop and validate an fMRI task in which demands on the affective and the cognitive social cognition route are manipulated independently and that therefore allows the investigation of their interaction as well as differential impairment. Methods: We developed the EmpaToM, a 30 minute paradigm presenting participants with naturalistic video stimuli (~15 seconds) in which people recount auto-biographical episodes that are either emotionally negative (e.g. loss of a loved one) or neutral (control condition; e.g., commuting to work). Each video is followed by ratings of affect and of empathic concern. Subsequently, specific questions about the content of the video are probing either ToM (questions about the mental states of people in the video) or no ToM (control condition; factual reasoning). The task, hence, follows a 2 (negative emotional load versus no emotional load) x 2 (ToM requirements versus factual reasoning) factorial design. In a first validation study, 19 participants were tested in the EmpaToM and classical tasks measuring empathy (the Social Video Task (SoVT) [5]) and ToM [2] (3T Siemens Verio Scanner; TR = 2000; TE = ; 37 slices (2 mm)). Results: Viewing negative emotional compared to neutral videos increased activation in a distinct network including the bilateral AI and aMCC. This empathy network overlapped with activity elicited by the SoVT [5] and coordinates derived from a meta-analysis on empathy for pain paradigms [1]. Affect ratings and emotional concern ratings after the emotionally negative videos were correlated with the IRI subscale ‘empathic concern’ and with SoVT concern ratings. Furthermore, activity in the aMCC and right AI was parametrically modulated by the subjective rating of negative emotion experienced after each video. Contrasting ToM- and factual reasoning during the questions activated the well-described network including bilateral TPJ, temporal poles and mPFC. Again, these clusters largely overlapped with a classical false-belief ToM-task [2]. A subsequent study with 200 participants replicated these patterns. Conclusions: The present results confirm that the EmpaTom is able to reliably identify and separate the networks underlying our abilities to empathize (affective route) and to mentalize (cognitive route) within individuals and one task. This makes the EmpaToM a suitable task for the efficient differentiation of empathy and ToM related networks and for investigating their interaction. The EmpaToM could be of tremendous use for both the comprehensive characterization of different types of deficits in psychopathology as well as for the measurement of differential training effects and interventions both on the level of behavior and brain functioning. References [1] Lamm, C., Decety, J., & Singer, T. (2011). ‘Meta-analytic evidence for common and distinct neural networks associated with directly experienced pain and empathy for pain’, NeuroImage, vol. 54, pp. 2492-2502. [2] Dodell-Feder, D., Koster-Hale, J., Bedny, M., Saxe, R. (2011). ‘fMRI item analysis in a theory of mind task’, Neuroimage, vol. 55, pp. 705-12. [3] Singer, T. (2006). ‘The neuronal basis and ontogeny of empathy and mind reading: Review of literature and implications for future research’, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, vol. 30, pp. 855-863. [4] Bird, G., Silani, G., Brindley, R., White, S., Frith, U., & Singer, T. (2010). ‘Empathic brain responses in insula are modulated by levels of alexithymia but not autism’, vol., 133, pp. 1515-1525. [5] Klimecki, O.M., Leiberg, S., Lamm, C., & Singer, T. 2013). ‚Functional Neural Plasticity and Associated Changes in Positive Affect After Compassion Training’. Cerebral Cortex, vol. 23, pp. 1552-1561

Aggressive, violent behaviour is a major burden and challenge for society. It has been linked to deficits in social understanding, but the evidence is inconsistent and the specifics of such deficits are unclear. Here, we investigated affective (empathy) and cognitive (Theory of Mind) routes to understanding other people in aggressive individuals. Twenty-nine men with a history of legally relevant aggressive behaviour (i.e. serious assault) and 32 control participants were tested using a social video task (EmpaToM) that differentiates empathy and Theory of Mind and completed questionnaires on aggression and alexithymia. Aggressive participants showed reduced empathic responses to emotional videos of others’ suffering, which correlated with aggression severity. Theory of Mind performance, in contrast, was intact. A mediation analysis revealed that reduced empathy in aggressive men was mediated by alexithymia. These findings stress the importance of distinguishing between socio-affecti...

This chapter focuses on the neuroscience of compassion and related social emotions such as empathy, empathic concern, or empathic distress. First, we review neuroscientific literature on empathy and relate empathy to similar social emotions. We then turn to neuroscientific research on caregiving and social connection before describing cross-sectional studies on the neural signatures of compassion. To investigate whether training of compassion can change neural functions, the neural “fingerprints” of compassion expertise were studied in both expert and inexperienced meditators. The latter included the comparison between functional plasticity induced by empathy for suffering as opposed to compassion training. These studies show that compassion training changes neural functions, and that the neural substrates related to empathy for suffering differ experientially as well as neuronally. This is in line with the observation of distinct behavioral patterns related to feelings of empathic ...

Meditation can be regarded as a kind of mental training, and may thus be linked to increased effort and physiological arousal. Such definition is in contrast to a widely held belief that meditation mainly leads to relaxation associated with lower effort and physiological arousal. However, effects of meditation on effort and physiological arousal may vary depending on the type of meditation, degree of mental effort, and amount of training. In the current study, we therefore assessed heart rate (HR), high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV) and subjective ratings of effort and likeability during three types of meditation varying in their cognitive and attentional requirements, namely breathing meditation (BM), loving-kindness meditation (LKM) and observing-thoughts meditation (OTM). As part of a one-year longitudinal mental training study called the ReSource project, participants practiced each type of meditation exercise on a daily basis for 3 months. In line with our hypotheses, HR and effort were higher during LKM and OTM compared to BM. With training over time, HR and likeability increased, while HF-HRV and the subjective experience of effort decreased. The increase in HR and decrease in HF-HRV over time was stronger for LKM and OTM as compared to BM. The current study therefore suggests that core meditations aiming at improving compassion (LKM) and meta-cognitive skills (OTM) require effort and are associated with higher physiological arousal as compared to BM. Overall, these findings can be helpful in making more specific suggestions about which type of meditation is most adaptive for a given context and population

Though prosocial behavior is crucial for societies to function its reliable scientific assessment in the lab is still a challenge. The present study integrated paradigms from diverse disciplines in order to identify the overall structure and sub-components of prosociality. To this end, participants (N=187) played anonymous one-shot versions of economic games such as the Dictator Game, the Trust Game, and the 2nd and 3rd Person Punishment Game, engaged in the Zürich Prosocial Game, completed a donation as well as social discounting task and filled in trait questionnaires typically employed to assess prosociality. Results of a factor analyses identified four independent factors: a factor ‘Prosocial Motivation’ comprises behaviors as diverse as helping, generosity, donations to NGOs, favoring equal distributions, and trust. Factor 2 ‘Readiness to punish’ reflects the inclination to punish violations of distribution norms and choose monetary distributions independent of social distance. Factor 3 ‘Strategizing’ describes the tendency to make decisions dependent on cost-benefit analyses. Finally, factor 4 “Self-Report Measures” is determined by the method of using trait questionnaires and reflects people’s personal view on their own prosociality. These findings reveal a more differentiated picture of human prosociality involving meaningful sub-components, one of them being clearly determined by the underlying methods. Such findings may have important implications for research on the determinants of prosociality ranging from genetics to development and plasticity research

The COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns have posed unique and severe challenges to our global society. To gain an integrative understanding of pervasive social and mental health impacts in 3522 Berlin residents aged 18 to 65, we systematically investigated the structural and temporal relationship between a variety of psychological indicators of vulnerability, resilience and social cohesion before, during and after the first lockdown in Germany using a retrospective longitudinal study design. Factor analyses revealed that (a) vulnerability and resilience indicators converged on one general bipolar factor, (b) residual variance of resilience indicators formed a distinct factor of adaptive coping capacities and (c) social cohesion could be reliably measured with a hierarchical model including four first-order dimensions of trust, a sense of belonging, social interactions and social engagement, and one second-order social cohesion factor. In the second step, latent change score m...

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Training Mind and Heart: Effects of Mental Training on Mental and Physical Health, Brain and Prosocial Behavior Emerging fields such as the social- and contemplative neurosciences have focused on the questions of how people relate to and understand each other. Hereby, the ability for cognitive perspective taking is differentiated from concepts of emotion contagion, empathy, and compassion; the former represents a cognitive route to the understanding of others, the latter a motivational and affective route. Recently, neuroscientists have started to investigate the plasticity of the social brain, that is the trainability of capacities such as empathy, compassion or perspective taking through meditation-based mental training and describe its effects on changes in brain functions, subjective well-being, pro-social behavior, and health. One of these studies is a large-scale multi-disciplinary one-year secular mental training study, the ReSource Project, that aims at the daily cultivation of different capacities such as body awareness, perspective taking, empathy, and compassion as well as prosocial motivation and behavior. I will provide first results and evidence for socio-affective as well as socio-cognitive brain plasticity after mental training of empathy or compassion on the one hand and cognitive perspective taking on the other. While empathy training enhanced negative affect and activation in brain networks associated with suffering, compassion training resulted in an increase of positive affect and activation in brain networks associated to affiliation and care. Finally, daily cultivation of taking another’s person perspective lead to an improvement in measures of social intelligence with associated changes in neuronal mentalizing networks. Finally, such intersubjective skill training enhanced prosocial behavior and reduced social stress. These findings will be discussed in the context of how these can help move towards a more caring and balanced society. From the contemplative side, we will consider the difference between altruistic love, empathy and compassion. We will explore the consequences of dealing with the suffering of others only with empathy, which seems to lead to emotional exhaustion and burn-out, and the ways that cultivating altruistic love and compassion through training the mind (meditation) can serve as an antitode to burn out and allow to deal with the suffering of others in more constructive and meaningful ways

序 思いやりの経済学に向けて １ 利他と向社会的行動に関する科学的研究（利己‐利他論争—心理学的視点から；共感と内受容性皮質；コンパッションの神経基盤；利他に関する仏教的観点；生存のための生物学的要求—利他再考） ２ 利他と向社会的行動に関する経済学的研究（社会的ジレンマ実験；仏教経済学事始め；幸福の経済学；利他的懲罰と公共財の創出） ３ 経済システムへの向社会性の導入（目的のある利益；マイクロファイナンスは何を為しうるか？；ベアフット・カレッジ；コンパッションに満ちたリーダーシップ） 結語 コンパッションは贅沢品ではない

With the emergence of the fields of social-affective and contemplative sciences researchers have started thinking about the challenge to integrate first-person subjective reports with the traditional third-person objective measurements of behavior, brain, and body. A good example for such an integrated approach is plasticity research based on mental training studies. Thus, recent findings have suggested that training of mental capacities such as attention, mindfulness, empathy and compassion is indeed effective and leads to changes in both subjective well-being as well as in brain functions, health, and behavior. As an example for plasticity research, I will introduce the ReSource Project, a large-scale interdisciplinary and multi-methodological one-year secular mental training program that aims at the cultivation of attention, interoceptive awareness, perspective taking on self and others, meta-cognition, compassion, empathy, and prosocial motivation. To achieve these goals, we assessed more than 90 measures in more than 200 subjects including subjective measures and a huge variety of objective data ranging from behavioral, functional and structural brain-, autonomic nervous system- to genetic and hormonal measures. I will present first results of this large-scale study relating to differential pattern of brain plasticity observed after empathy versus compassion versus cognitive perspective taking training respectively. Furthermore I will present training-module specific findings of stress-reduction (i.e. cortisol) and prosocial behavior. Finally, I will use examples of the ReSource Project to highlight challenges related to the appropriate integration of measures of first-person subjective experience and third-person measurements and discuss these in the context of plasticity research in the field of social neurosciences