Neural Correlates Of The Effects Of Acute Alcohol Intoxication On Empathy:Evidence From Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)

Empathy refers to the ability to infer and share other’s affective and sensory state. As a complex social emotion, empathy is important to our social life. Alcohol was found to chronically impair the empathic ability in alcohol-dependent patients. However, whether empathy for other’s pain could be modulated by acute alcohol intoxication both at behavioral and neural level in healthy social drinkers remains an issue unsolved. A double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subject design was adopted and all participants were asked to perform a pain-judgment task according to the affective content of pictures depicting painful or non-painful situations of body parts during fMRI scanning, either in the alcohol or placebo session. As we hypothesized, empathic neural activity in certain region of empathy network (e.g. dACC) was significantly reduced in the alcohol session, compared with those in placebo session. Psycho-Physiological Interaction (PPI) analysis further showed that different regions of empathy neural network exhibited differential connectivity patterns during pain-related empathy either in placebo session or alcohol session. Specifically, increased connectivity between right AI and fronto-parietal control network during perceiving other’s pain (vs. nopain) was observed in the placebo session, whereas stronger increased connectivity between left AI and bilateral visual cortices during empathy was observed in the alcohol session. These results indicated, on one hand, the different effect of acute alcohol intoxication on empathic responses in variant regions, and, on the other hand, the dissociative role within empathy core network (esp. dACC and AI) played during empathy. Besides, we also found that empathic neural activity in right AI significantly correlated with the scores of empathic concern subscale of IRI only in the alcohol session. Our data not only may help to explain the possible mechanism underlying the clinical findings of chronic effect of alcohol on empathic ability (trait empathy) in alcohol-dependent patients, but also provided insights for understanding the role of empathy in the relationship between alcohol consumption and aggressive behaviors.