The Effects Of Interoception On Pain Empathy

The study of interoception is a hot topic in the study of embodied cognition.The interoception refers to the individual’s awareness of the internal state of the body,which includes two different forms: the proprioceptive feeling(proprioception)and the visceral feeling(visceroception).This study mainly uses the narrow concept of interoception,that is,the visceroception.At present,under the influence of the embodied cognition theory,people have deeply studied the feelings of external stimuli from the environment ——external feelings(such as vision,hearing,taste and smell),but the internal feelings of perceiving the physiological activities of the internal state of the body(visceral organs)are relatively few,especially the domestic research is rare,and most of them stay at the theoretical level.In this study,two experiments were used to explore the effect of interoception on pain empathy and its neural basis.In experiment 1,47 college students participated in this experiment,mainly exploring the correlation between interoception and the cognitive empathy and emotional empathy during pain empathy.Results show,interoception was positively correlated with the estimated intensity of pain(cognitive empathy).A significant positive correlation was observed between interoception and empathy for the situations described in the pain picture(emotional empathy);and a positive correlation between interoception and their own distress.There was no significant correlation between interoception and emotional valence,arousal or familiarity of the pain images.And there was no significant correlation between interoception and the emotional valence,arousal,estimated intensity of pain,compassion,distress or familiarity of the non-pain images.On the basis of Experiment 1,the subjects in Experiment 2 were screened and divided into two groups,namely,the high group and the low group with the score of interoception.One standard deviation above the mean was set as the high group,and one standard deviation below the mean was set as the low group.In the end,19 subjects meet the requirements were screened,including 9 in the high group and 10 in the low group.Using 2×2 two–factor mixed experimental design,the independent variable is the picture type(intra–group variables,pain/non-pain)and interoception(inter–group variables,high/low).The dependent variable is an indicator of f NIRS: changes in oxygenated hemoglobin(Hb O)concentrations in 44 channels,expressed by β values.It was found that:(1)In the subjects with high interoception,there is a great difference between the activation mode in pain condition and that in non-pain condition,while the activation mode of subjects with low interoception was basically the same between pain condition and non-pain condition.(2)The intra-group analysis found that when the subjects looked at the pictures of pain and non-pain,the difference of brain activity was mainly in the somatosensory cortex and frontal lobe.In addition,it was noted that subjects with high interoception had greater activation in the anterior motor cortex and auxiliary motor cortex and primary somatosensory cortex than those with low interoception subjects.It may means that subjects with high interoception group have greater internal simulation of other people’s movements,which also leads to greater empathy response.(3)The inter-group analysis found that the β difference between the two conditions has significant difference on channels 2,3,and 28.The corresponding positions of these channels with the Brodmann’s area showed that these channels correspond to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and somatosensory cortex.The results of further repeated measurement ANOVA and simple effect analysis showed that the activation difference between the two picture types was not significant in the case of low interoception.But in the case of high interoception,the activation degree of pain pictures was significantly higher than that of non-pain pictures.Conclusion:(1)Interoception regulates emotional empathy,cognitive empathy and distress.(2)The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the left primary somatosensory cortex are significantly activated in pain empathy in individuals with high interoception,resulting in greater empathy.