The Critical Role Of The Medial Prefrontal Cortex In The Development Of Empathy In Early School-age Children

Empathy is the ability of individuals to experience and understand the feelings of others.The ability to empathize is important for both individual interaction and social development.Good empathy skills can promote prosocial behavior,reduce aggression and foster the social development of individuals.Childhood is a period of rapid empathy development.However,previous studies mainly focused on the behavioral manifestations of empathy in children and have not explored the development of empathic brain regions in detail.Understanding the neural mechanisms underlying the development of empathy will provide a scientific basis for the cultivation of empathy during this stage.This study explored empathy development and its neural mechanism in early school-age children through three sub-studies.Study 1 examined the level of empathic behavior in 70 7-yearold children and explored empathic neural activity by naturalistic f MRI techniques.Also,differences in brain activities of children with high and low empathy were compared.Study 2selected 30 adults in an open database and compared them to the 70 children in Study 1.The same naturalistic f MRI experimental paradigm was used for both groups and the distinctions of neural activities between children and adults were compared.Study 3 further tracked the neural development of empathy in 10 children from age 7 to 8 years.Study 1 found that children with higher empathic behavior scores had stronger activation in the middle-medial prefrontal cortex（MMPFC）and ventromedial prefrontal cortex（VMPFC）in cognitive empathy.They also had higher activities in the left secondary sensory cortex（S2）and the right medial frontal gyrus（MFG）in emotional empathy than children with low scores.Empathy scores were significantly positively correlated with activation intensity in MMPFC and VMPFC.Study 2 showed that children had significantly lower activation in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex（DMPFC）and MMPFC than adults in cognitive empathy and lower activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex（DLPFC）in emotional empathy than adults.Children also had significantly lower functional connectivity within emotional empathy than adults but had higher connectivity across the emotional and cognitive empathy areas.Study 3 found that from age 7 to8 years,children showed more activation in the insula,inferior frontal gyrus（IFG）,and MFG in emotional empathy;the VMPFC was consistently involved in emotional and cognitive empathy.These results suggest that the gradual engagement of the MPFC in cognitive empathy may account for the development of cognitive empathy in children at this stage;whereas the dorsal and ventral prefrontal cortex in emotional empathy may be responsible for the decline in emotional sharing.In conclusion,the MPFC plays an important role in the development of empathy in early school-aged children.This study deepens the exploration of the mechanism of empathic neurodevelopment in children and provides theoretical support for empathic development in early elementary school-age children,as well as a reference for neural development in healthy groups of children with disabilities.