Laura Müller-Pinzler

On the distinction of empathic and vicarious emotions

In the introduction to the special issue “The Neural Underpinnings of Vicarious Experience” the editors state that one “may feel embarrassed when witnessing another making a social faux pas”. In our commentary we address this statement and ask whether this example introduces a vicarious or an empathic form of embarrassment. We elaborate commonalities and differences between these two forms of emotional experiences and discuss their underlying mechanisms. We suggest that both, vicarious and empathic emotions, originate from the simulation processes mirroring and mentalizing that depend on anchoring and adjustment. We claim the term “empathic emotion” to be reserved exclusively for incidents where perceivers and social targets have shared affective experience, whereas “vicarious emotion” offers a wider scope and also includes non-shared affective experiences. Both are supposed to be highly functional in social interactions.

Evidence from pupillometry and fMRI indicates reduced neural response during vicarious social pain but not physical pain in autism

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by substantial social deficits. The notion that dysfunctions in neural circuits involved in sharing anothers affect explain these deficits is appealing, but has received only modest experimental support. Here we evaluated a complex paradigm on the vicarious social pain of embarrassment to probe social deficits in ASD as to whether it is more potent than paradigms currently in use. To do so we acquired pupillometry and fMRI in young adults with ASD and matched healthy controls. During a simple vicarious physical pain task no differences emerged between groups in behavior, pupillometry, and neural activation of the anterior insula (AIC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). In contrast, processing complex vicarious social pain yielded reduced responses in ASD on all physiological measures of sharing anothers affect. The reduced activity within the AIC was thereby explained by the severity of autistic symptoms in the social and affective domain. Additionally, behavioral responses lacked correspondence with the anterior cingulate and anterior insula cortex activity found in controls. Instead, behavioral responses in ASD were associated with hippocampal activity. The observed dissociation echoes the clinical observations that deficits in ASD are most pronounced in complex social situations and simple tasks may not probe the dysfunctions in neural pathways involved in sharing affect. Our results are highly relevant because individuals with ASD may have preserved abilities to share anothers physical pain but still have problems with the vicarious representation of more complex emotions that matter in life. Hum Brain Mapp, 2015.

Neural pathways of embarrassment and their modulation by social anxiety

While being in the center of attention and exposed to others evaluations humans are prone to experience embarrassment. To characterize the neural underpinnings of such aversive moments, we induced genuine experiences of embarrassment during person-group interactions in a functional neuroimaging study. Using a mock-up scenario with three confederates, we examined how the presence of an audience affected physiological and neural responses and the reported emotional experiences of failures and achievements. The results indicated that publicity induced activations in mentalizing areas and failures led to activations in arousal processing systems. Mentalizing activity as well as attention towards the audience were increased in socially anxious participants. The converging integration of information from mentalizing areas and arousal processing systems within the ventral anterior insula and amygdala forms the neural pathways of embarrassment. Targeting these neural markers of embarrassment in the (para-)limbic system provides new perspectives for developing treatment strategies for social anxiety disorders.

Journal Impact Factor Shapes Scientists’ Reward Signal in the Prospect of Publication

The incentive structure of a scientist’s life is increasingly mimicking economic principles. While intensely criticized, the journal impact factor (JIF) has taken a role as the new currency for scientists. Successful goal-directed behavior in academia thus requires knowledge about the JIF. Using functional neuroimaging we examined how the JIF, as a powerful incentive in academia, has shaped the behavior of scientists and the reward signal in the striatum. We demonstrate that the reward signal in the nucleus accumbens increases with higher JIF during the anticipation of a publication and found a positive correlation with the personal publication record (pJIF) supporting the notion that scientists have incorporated the predominant reward principle of the scientific community in their reward system. The implications of this behavioral adaptation within the ecological niche of the scientist’s habitat remain unknown, but may also have effects which were not intended by the community.

When your friends make you cringe: social closeness modulates vicarious embarrassment related neural activity

Social closeness is a potent moderator of vicarious affect and specifically vicarious embarrassment. The neural pathways of how social closeness to another person affects our experience of vicarious embarrassment for the others public flaws, failures and norm violations are yet unknown. To bridge this gap, we examined the neural response of participants while witnessing threats to either a friends or a strangers social integrity. The results show consistent responses of the anterior insula (AI) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), shared circuits of the aversive quality of affect, as well as the medial prefrontal cortex and temporal pole, central structures of the mentalizing network. However, the ACC/AI network activation was increased during vicarious embarrassment in response to a friends failures. At the same time, the precuneus, a brain region associated with self-related thoughts, showed a specific activation and an increase in functional connectivity with the shared circuits in the frontal lobe while observing friends. This might indicate a neural systems mechanism for greater affective sharing and self-involvement while people interact with close others that are relevant to oneself.

Increased autonomic activation in vicarious embarrassment.

We studied the somatovisceral response pattern of vicarious embarrassment for someone elses inappropriate condition. Participants (N=54) were confronted with hand-drawn sketches depicting public situations and were instructed to rate the intensity of their vicarious embarrassment. The inappropriate condition varied according to the attribution of intentionality (absent/present) and awareness (absent/present). Irrespective of these attributions, participants reported stronger vicarious embarrassment in comparison to neutral situations. Across a set of eleven somatovisceral variables vicarious embarrassment elicited a pattern of increased autonomic activation which was modulated by the awareness of the protagonist about the ongoing norm violation. The somatovisceral response pattern matches previous findings for the first-person experience of embarrassment. Together, these results support the hypothesis that processes of perspective taking also mediate the vicarious experience of embarrassment.

Laugh or cringe? Common and distinct processes of reward-based schadenfreude and empathy-based fremdscham

ABSTRACT Witnessing others’ plights can be funny for observers, but may also trigger one to empathically cringe with the victim of the predicament. In the present study, we examined the common and distinct neural networks involved in schadenfreude (i.e. pleasure derived from anothers misfortune) and fremdscham (i.e. empathically sharing the embarrassment about anothers misfortune). Using functional magnetic resonance imaging we examined a total of N = 34 participants while they observed social integrity threats of a misfortunate other and either reported on their schadenfreude or fremdscham. In this between‐subject design, we found that despite a broad overlap in brain regions involved in social cognition, the left anterior insula (AI) was activated less if observers were asked to focus on their schadenfreude. Further, the nucleus accumbens activity exclusively covaried with the intensity of the schadenfreude experience and had a higher functional connectivity with the left AI in the context of schadenfreude than during fremdscham. With the present findings, we demonstrate that the valence and intensity of interpersonal emotions strongly depend on the experimental context and that empathy and reward circuits are involved in shaping the subjective experience. HIGHLIGHTSObserving others’ predicaments can trigger emotions of schadenfreude and fremdscham.Common and distinct neural networks underlie schadenfreude and fremdscham.Schadenfreude rather linked to reward, fremdscham rather linked to empathy.Attenuated insula activity if observers focus on schadenfreude vs. fremdscham.Valence and intensity of interpersonal emotions depend on motivational stance.

The causal role of the somatosensory cortex in prosocial behaviour

Witnessing another person’s suffering elicits vicarious brain activity in areas that are active when we ourselves are in pain. Whether this activity influences prosocial behavior remains the subject of debate. Here participants witnessed a confederate express pain through a reaction of the swatted hand or through a facial expression, and could decide to reduce that pain by donating money. Participants donate more money on trials in which the confederate expressed more pain. Electroencephalography shows that activity of the somatosensory cortex I (SI) hand region explains variance in donation. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) shows that altering this activity interferes with the pain–donation coupling only when pain is expressed by the hand. High-definition transcranial direct current stimulation (HD-tDCS) shows that altering SI activity also interferes with pain perception. These experiments show that vicarious somatosensory activations contribute to prosocial decision-making and suggest that they do so by helping to transform observed reactions of affected body-parts into accurate perceptions of pain that are necessary for decision-making.

Neuronale Schaltkreise des Peinlichkeitserlebens

Zusammenfassung Peinlichkeit ist eine genuin menschliche Emotion, die wir erleben, wenn wir in einem öffentlichen Kontext bloßgestellt werden. Hierbei ist die Fähigkeit zur Perspektivübernahme entscheidend, die es uns ermöglicht zu verstehen, was andere Personen fühlen und über uns denken. Auf neuronaler Ebene ist Perspektivübernahme unter anderem eng mit Aktivität in Bereichen des medialen präfrontalen Kortex und dem Precuneus assoziiert. Gleichzeitig löst das Missgeschick und die erwartete negative Bewertung der Anderen eine emotionale Erregung aus, die durch Aktivierungen der anterioren Insula und des anterioren cingulären Kortex gekennzeichnet ist.Besonders ist hierbei, dass beide Netzwerke nicht isoliert voneinander Peinlichkeit vermitteln, sondern nur gemeinsam durch ihre funktionelle Kopplung mit Strukturen des (para-)limbischen Systems dieses komplexe emotionale Erleben erklären können. Peinlichkeitserleben setzt damit die Anwesenheit anderer voraus, die allerdings ebenfalls emotional auf die Situation reagieren. Dementsprechend kann Peinlichkeit auch stellvertretend für die Missgeschicke und das Fehlverhalten Anderer empfunden werden. Auch bei diesem sogenannten „Fremdschämen“ spielt die Fähigkeit zur Perspektivübernahme eine entscheidende Rolle. Beobachter und Beobachterinnen verinnerlichen die Bedrohung der sozialen Integrität Anderer, was ebenfalls emotionale Erregung, nun stellvertretend, induziert. Derartige interpersonelle Emotionen gewinnen im Kontext klinischer Störungen eine besondere Relevanz. Speziell soziale Angststörungen oder Autismus- Spektrum- Erkrankungen sind dabei zentral mit Auffälligkeiten assoziiert, die sich direkt in sozialen Interaktionen manifestieren. Das kann zu starken Einschränkungen im Sozialverhalten führen und damit das Wohlbefinden der Betroffenen nachhaltig verändern.