The Influence Of Attention Level On Empathy For Pain

Recently, the neural mechanisms involved in empathy are attracting more and more attention in cognitive neuroscience studies. Most of the researcher use the subjects'perception of pain of others to reveal the truth。Previous brain imaging studies have shown that the neural substrates underlying the ability to infer and share the feeling of pain of other individuals overlap with the pain matrix that mediates the process of one's own pain, which means that there is a neural circuit that is involved in empathy for pain. Its is commonly assumed that empathy for pain consists of early emotional sharing and late cognitve evaluation. However, the temporal researches remain poorly undrstood on whether the early emotional sharing is processed automatically and modulated by attention to the pain.this study, using equiprobable experimental paradigm and ERP technique, reveals the time characteristics of dynamic brain processing of the empathy for pain and the regulation of attention to the emotional sharing and cognitive evaluation of empathy for pain。The experimental results showed that: (1) The main differences in ERP induced by Pain stimulus and neutral stimulus are obtained from P170 and LPC。Pain stimuli induced greater P170 and LPC than neutral stimuli, showed that pain stimuli occupy more cognitive resources, processing deeper。(2) Current research from the behavioral data observed in hands and feet to identify the task accuracy higher, with shorter reaction time than in figuring out the letters task, P170, LPC component of volatility also with attention to changes in different conditions, letter identification task that consumes more attention resources。(3) The early emotional sharing of empathy for pain is not completely automatically elicited, which is modulated by attention to the pain。The P170 significantly different between Pain stimulus and neutral stimulus。In letter discrimination task, regardless of the polarity of stimulation, responses were not different。(4) In 450-550ms,550-650ms two time window, there is interaction between stimulus type and attention. In hands and feet discrimination task, pain stimulation, the neutral stimulus induced significant differences in the LPC。Letter discrimination task, regardless of the polarity of stimulation, responses were not different,late cognitive evaluation of empathy for pain are also modulated by attention。...