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.

• Publication year

  2018

• Venue

  eLife

• Publication date

  2018-05-08

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.7554/eLife.32740PMID 29735015PMCID 5973831
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• THE THEORY OF MORAL SENTIMENTS

  2019cited by this paper
• Visual, sensorimotor and cognitive routes to understanding others' enjoyment: An individual differences rTMS approach to empathic accuracy

  2018cited by this paper
• Boosting and Decreasing Action Prediction Abilities Through Excitatory and Inhibitory tDCS of Inferior Frontal Cortex

  2018cited by this paper
• Empathy, Schmempathy: Response to Zaki.

  2017cited by this paper
• Moving beyond Stereotypes of Empathy.

  2017cited by this paper
• Sex differences in social cognition: The case of face processing

  2017cited by this paper
• Empathic Care and Distress: Predictive Brain Markers and Dissociable Brain Systems.

  2017cited by this paper
• Primary somatosensory cortex necessary for the perception of weight from other people's action: A continuous theta-burst TMS experiment

  2017cited by this paper
• Psychopharmacological modulation of event‐related potentials suggests that first‐hand pain and empathy for pain rely on similar opioidergic processes

  2017cited by this paper
• Mammalian empathy: behavioural manifestations and neural basis

  2017cited by this paper
• Mimicking emotions.

  2017cited by this paper
• Endogenous opioids regulate social threat learning in humans

  2017cited by this paper
• Sex differences in the decoding of pain‐related body postures

  2017cited by this paper
• A Plea for Cross-species Social Neuroscience.

  2016cited by this paper
• Sensorimotor Network Crucial for Inferring Amusement from Smiles

  2016cited by this paper
• Simultaneous acoustic stimulation of human primary and secondary somatosensory cortices using transcranial focused ultrasound

  2016cited by this paper
• Increased neural responses to empathy for pain might explain how acute stress increases prosociality

  2016cited by this paper
• The brain’s functional network architecture reveals human motives

  2016cited by this paper
• Self‐other resonance, its control and prosocial inclinations: Brain–behavior relationships

  2016cited by this paper
• Cross-modal representations of first-hand and vicarious pain, disgust and fairness in insular and cingulate cortex

  2016cited by this paper
• The Anatomy of Suffering: Understanding the Relationship between Nociceptive and Empathic Pain.

  2016cited by this paper
• Fashioning the Face: Sensorimotor Simulation Contributes to Facial Expression Recognition.

  2016cited by this paper
• Are empathy and concern psychologically distinct?

  2016cited by this paper
• Altering sensorimotor feedback disrupts visual discrimination of facial expressions

  2016cited by this paper
• Somatic and vicarious pain are represented by dissociable multivariate brain patterns

  2016cited by this paper
• Gender differences in the neural network of facial mimicry of smiles--An rTMS study.

  2015cited by this paper
• Image-Guided Transcranial Focused Ultrasound Stimulates Human Primary Somatosensory Cortex

  2015cited by this paper
• Empathic concern drives costly altruism

  2015cited by this paper
• Non-invasive electrical and magnetic stimulation of the brain, spinal cord, roots and peripheral nerves: Basic principles and procedures for routine clinical and research application. An updated report from an I.F.C.N. Committee

  2015cited by this paper
• Responsibility modulates pain-matrix activation elicited by the expressions of others in pain

  2015cited by this paper
• Placebo analgesia and its opioidergic regulation suggest that empathy for pain is grounded in self pain

  2015cited by this paper
• Architectonic Mapping of the Human Brain beyond Brodmann.

  2015cited by this paper
• Perturbing the action observation network during perception and categorization of actions' goals and grips: state-dependency and virtual lesion TMS effects.

  2015cited by this paper
• Empathy: gender effects in brain and behavior.

  2014cited by this paper
• Their pain gives us pleasure: How intergroup dynamics shape empathic failures and counter-empathic responses.

  2014cited by this paper
• Gender differences in the nonverbal communication of pain: A new direction for sex, gender, and pain research?

  2014cited by this paper
• Transcranial focused ultrasound modulates intrinsic and evoked EEG dynamics.

  2014cited by this paper
• The (non)relation between empathy and aggression: surprising results from a meta-analysis.

  2014cited by this paper
• Action Simulation Plays a Critical Role in Deceptive Action Recognition

  2013cited by this paper
• Induction of mirror-touch synaesthesia by increasing somatosensory cortical excitability.

  2013cited by this paper
• Transcranial magnetic stimulation over human secondary somatosensory cortex disrupts perception of pain intensity

  2013cited by this paper
• Comparing cortical plasticity induced by conventional and high-definition 4 × 1 ring tDCS: a neurophysiological study.

  2013cited by this paper
• An fMRI-based neurologic signature of physical pain.

  2013cited by this paper
• Integration of Error Agency and Representation of Others' Pain in the Anterior Insula

  2013cited by this paper
• Reduced spontaneous but relatively normal deliberate vicarious representations in psychopathy

  2013cited by this paper
• The functional architecture of S1 during touch observation described with 7 T fMRI

  2013cited by this paper
• Emotional Mimicry as Social Regulation

  2013cited by this paper
• COMETS: A MATLAB toolbox for simulating local electric fields generated by transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS)

  2013cited by this paper
• “Feeling” others' painful actions: The sensorimotor integration of pain and action information,

  2012cited by this paper
• Fine-Grained Nociceptive Maps in Primary Somatosensory Cortex

  2012cited by this paper
• An fMRI Study Exploring the Overlap and Differences between Neural Representations of Physical and Recalled Pain

  2012cited by this paper
• Emotions promote social interaction by synchronizing brain activity across individuals

  2012cited by this paper
• Unveiling the Biometric Potential of Finger-Based ECG Signals

  2011cited by this paper
• Meta-analytic evidence for common and distinct neural networks associated with directly experienced pain and empathy for pain

  2011influential reference
• Large-scale automated synthesis of human functional neuroimaging data

  2011cited by this paper
• Neural responses to perceived pain in others predict real-life monetary donations in different socioeconomic contexts

  2011cited by this paper
• Felt and Seen Pain Evoke the Same Local Patterns of Cortical Activity in Insular and Cingulate Cortex

  2011cited by this paper
• Somatosensation in social perception

  2010cited by this paper
• Neural responses to ingroup and outgroup members' suffering predict individual differences in costly helping.

  2010cited by this paper
• FieldTrip: Open Source Software for Advanced Analysis of MEG, EEG, and Invasive Electrophysiological Data

  2010influential reference
• Empathic Sensorimotor Resonance with Other-Race Pain

  2010cited by this paper
• Single-neuron responses in humans during execution and observation of actions.

  2010cited by this paper
• Unravelling the Mystery of Pain, Suffering, and Relief With Brain Imaging

  2010cited by this paper
• From the neuromatrix to the pain matrix (and back)

  2010cited by this paper
• Safety, ethical considerations, and application guidelines for the use of transcranial magnetic stimulation in clinical practice and research.

  2009cited by this paper
• Expanding the mirror: vicarious activity for actions, emotions, and sensations.

  2009cited by this paper
• Do You Feel My Pain? Racial Group Membership Modulates Empathic Neural Responses

  2009cited by this paper
• Somatosensory processing and body representation.

  2009cited by this paper
• The perception of pain in others suppresses somatosensory oscillations: A magnetoencephalography study

  2008cited by this paper
• Empathy for pain and touch in the human somatosensory cortex.

  2007cited by this paper
• Facial expressions: What the mirror neuron system can and cannot tell us

  2007cited by this paper
• G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences

  2007influential reference
• Face to face: Blocking facial mimicry can selectively impair recognition of emotional expressions

  2007influential reference
• To what extent do we share the pain of others? Insight from the neural bases of pain empathy

  2006cited by this paper
• The empathic brain: how, when and why?

  2006influential reference
• Increased sensitivity in neuroimaging analyses using robust regression

  2005cited by this paper
• Improvement of Tactile Discrimination Performance and Enlargement of Cortical Somatosensory Maps after 5 Hz rTMS

  2005cited by this paper
• Pain and the Neuromatrix in the Brain

  2005cited by this paper
• Viewing the body prepares the brain for touch: effects of TMS over somatosensory cortex

  2005cited by this paper
• A new SPM toolbox for combining probabilistic cytoarchitectonic maps and functional imaging data

  2005cited by this paper
• An integrative MEG-fMRI study of the primary somatosensory cortex using cross-modal correspondence analysis

  2004cited by this paper
• Empathy for Pain Involves the Affective but not Sensory Components of Pain

  2004influential reference
• Enhanced Accuracy in Novel Mirror Drawing after Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation-Induced Proprioceptive Deafferentation

  2004cited by this paper
• Gender differences in judgments of multiple emotions from facial expressions.

  2004cited by this paper
• Feeling by sight or seeing by touch?

  2004cited by this paper
• Neural mechanisms of empathy in humans: A relay from neural systems for imitation to limbic areas

  2003cited by this paper
• Brain symmetry and topographic analysis of lateralized event-related potentials.

  2003cited by this paper
• Audiovisual mirror neurons and action recognition

  2003cited by this paper
• Transient Storage of a Tactile Memory Trace in Primary Somatosensory Cortex

  2002cited by this paper
• Processing of tactile and kinesthetic signals from bilateral sides of the body in the postcentral gyrus of awake monkeys.

  2002cited by this paper
• Action observation activates premotor and parietal areas in a somatotopic manner: an fMRI study

  2001cited by this paper
• Pain and the neuromatrix in the brain.

  2001cited by this paper
• Empathy: Its ultimate and proximate bases.

  2001cited by this paper
• Projections from the superior temporal sulcus to the agranular frontal cortex in the macaque

  2001cited by this paper
• Removing electroencephalographic artifacts by blind source separation.

  2000cited by this paper
• A Role for Somatosensory Cortices in the Visual Recognition of Emotion as Revealed by Three-Dimensional Lesion Mapping

  2000cited by this paper
• Pain-related neurons in the human cingulate cortex

  1999cited by this paper
• The sensory somatotopic map of the human hand demonstrated at 4 Tesla.

  1999cited by this paper
• Holmes and Watson on ‘Sherlock’

  1998cited by this paper
• Somatosensory homunculus as drawn by MEG.

  1998cited by this paper

• Research Progress on Neural Processing of Hand and Forearm Tactile Sensation: A Review Based on fMRI Research

  2025cites this paper
• On the possibility to modulate psychopathic traits via non-invasive brain stimulation: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

  2025cites this paper
• A review on the reporting and assessment of adverse effects associated with high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation

  2025cites this paper
• Place-related representations in setting the stage for empathy.

  2025cites this paper
• How Negative Emotions Influence Arithmetic Performance: A Magnetoencephalography Study

  2025cites this paper
• The facilitative mechanism of social interaction scenarios on second language vocabulary learning: evidence from near-infrared spectroscopy hyper-scanning.

  2025cites this paper
• Prosocial Helping Behavior: Conceptual Issues and Neural Mechanisms.

  2025cites this paper
• Dissecting shared pain representations to understand their behavioral and clinical relevance.

  2024cites this paper
• Neural circuits and therapeutic mechanisms of empathic pain.

  2024cites this paper
• Temporal dynamics of implicit moral evaluation: From empathy for pain to mentalizing processes.

  2024cites this paper
• Cognitive control: exploring the causal role of the rTPJ in empathy for pain mediated by contextual information

  2024cites this paper
• Understanding Others' Distress Through Past Experiences: The Role of Memory Engram Cells in Observational Fear.

  2024cites this paper
• What do physicians think about the white coat, about patients' view of the white coat, and how empathetic are physicians toward patients in hospital gowns? An enclothed cognition view

  2024cites this paper
• Visual perspective and body ownership modulate vicarious pain and touch: A systematic review

  2024cites this paper
• Neural, physiological and behavioural correlates of empathy for pain in Tourette syndrome

  2023cites this paper
• Endogenous opioid receptor system mediates costly altruism in the human brain

  2023cites this paper
• Empathy‐related differences in the anterior cingulate functional connectivity of regular cannabis users when compared to controls

  2023cites this paper
• Emotion regulation from an action-control perspective.

  2023cites this paper
• Dimensional emotions are represented by distinct topographical brain networks

  2023cites this paper
• Social cognition in hyperkinetic movement disorders: a systematic review

  2023cites this paper
• Human brain organoid transplantation: ethical implications of enhancing specific cerebral functions in small-animal models

  2023cites this paper
• Neural shifts in alpha rhythm's dual functioning during empathy maturation

  2023cites this paper
• Neural mechanisms of costly helping in the general population and mirror-pain synesthetes

  2023influential citation
• Altruistic responses to the most vulnerable involve sensorimotor processes

  2023cites this paper
• Neuro-computational mechanisms and individual biases in action-outcome learning under moral conflict

  2023influential citation
• Effects of social presence on behavioural, neural and physiological aspects of empathy for pain

  2023cites this paper
• Placebo Analgesia Reduces Costly Prosocial Helping to Lower Another Person’s Pain

  2022influential citation
• A Domain-General Developmental “Do-GooD” Network Model of Prosocial Cognition in Adolescence: A Systematic Review

  2022cites this paper
• Testing effects of social rejection on aggressive and prosocial behavior: A meta-analysis.

  2022cites this paper
• Mu rhythm and corticospinal excitability capture two different frames of motor resonance: A TMS-EEG co-registration study.

  2022cites this paper
• Mirror neurons 30 years later: implications and applications.

  2022cites this paper
• Sensory processing sensitivity and somatosensory brain activation when feeling touch

  2022cites this paper
• Neural basis of prosocial behavior.

  2022cites this paper
• Ongoing first-hand pain facilitates somatosensory resonance but inhibits affective sharing in empathy for pain

  2022cites this paper
• Intracranial human recordings reveal association between neural activity and perceived intensity for the pain of others in the insula

  2022cites this paper
• Neural, physiological and behavioral correlates of empathy for 1 pain in Tourette syndrome

  2022cites this paper
• Neural mechanisms necessary for empathy-related phenomena across species.

  2021cites this paper
• The Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Presents Structural Variations Associated with Empathic Capacity in Psychotherapists

  2021cites this paper
• Altruistic acting caused by a touching hand: neural underpinnings of the Midas touch effect

  2021cites this paper
• Does the cowl make the monk? The effect of military and Red Cross uniforms on empathy for pain, sense of agency and moral behaviors

  2021cites this paper
• Commanding or Being a Simple Intermediary: How Does It Affect Moral Behavior and Related Brain Mechanisms?

  2021cites this paper
• Observation of others’ threat reactions recovers memories previously shaped by firsthand experiences

  2021cites this paper
• Reduced frontal cortical tracking of conflict between self-beneficial versus prosocial motives in Narcissistic Personality Disorder

  2021cites this paper
• Rhythmic Neural Patterns During Empathy to Vicarious Pain: Beyond the Affective-Cognitive Empathy Dichotomy

  2021cites this paper
• Neural shifts in alpha rhythm's dual functioning during empathy

  2021cites this paper
• Somatosensory sharing of naturalistic pain depictions 1 Placebo analgesia does not reduce empathy for naturalistic depictions of others ’ pain in a somatosensory specific

  2021cites this paper
• Watch and Learn: Vicarious Threat Learning across Human Development

  2021cites this paper
• Do Empathic Individuals Behave More Prosocially? Neural Correlates for Altruistic Behavior in the Dictator Game and the Dark Side of Empathy

  2021cites this paper
• Intracranial Human Recordings Reveal Intensity Coding for the Pain of Others in the Insula

  2021cites this paper
• Dispositional empathy predicts primary somatosensory cortex activity while receiving touch by a hand

  2021cites this paper
• Intranasal vasopressin modulates resting state brain activity across multiple neural systems: evidence from a brain imaging machine learning study.

  2021cites this paper
• Reduced Frontal Cortical Tracking of Conflict between Selfish versus Prosocial Motives in Narcissistic Personality Disorder

  2021cites this paper
• Observation of others’ painful heat stimulation involves responses in the spinal cord

  2021cites this paper
• The effect of somatosensory alpha transcranial alternating current stimulation on pain empathy is trait empathy and gender dependent

  2021cites this paper
• Feeling Touched: Empathy Is Associated With Performance in a Tactile Acuity Task

  2021cites this paper
• Obeying orders reduces vicarious brain activation towards victims’ pain

  2020cites this paper
• Task-dependent changes in functional connectivity during the observation of social and non-social touch interaction.

  2020cites this paper
• Neuromodulation Special Issue Transcranial electric stimulation as a neural interface to gain insight on human brain functions: current knowledge and future perspective

  2020cites this paper
• Placebo Analgesia Does Not Reduce Empathy for Naturalistic Depictions of Others’ Pain in a Somatosensory Specific Way

  2020cites this paper
• Probing the role of the right inferior frontal gyrus during Pain‐Related empathy processing: Evidence from fMRI and TMS

  2020cites this paper
• Another’s pain in my brain: No evidence that placebo analgesia affects the sensory-discriminative component in empathy for pain

  2020cites this paper
• Empathic pain evoked by sensory and emotional-communicative cues share common and process-specific neural representations

  2020cites this paper
• Acute stress counteracts framing-induced generosity boosts in social discounting in young healthy men.

  2020cites this paper
• Transcranial electric stimulation as a neural interface to gain insight on human brain functions: current knowledge and future perspective.

  2020cites this paper
• Perspective taking reduces group biases in sensorimotor resonance.

  2020cites this paper
• Examining the Dorsolateral and Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Involvement in the Self-Attention Network: A Randomized, Sham-Controlled, Parallel Group, Double-Blind, and Multichannel HD-tDCS Study

  2020cites this paper
• EEG Patterns in Early Childhood Difer Between Children Prone To Reward “Bad” or “Good” Actors

  2020cites this paper
• Neuro-computational mechanisms of action-outcome learning under moral conflict

  2020cites this paper
• Empathy-Related Brain Activity in Somatosensory Cortex Protects From Tactile Priming Effects: A Pilot Study

  2020cites this paper
• Gaze, behavioral, and clinical data for phantom limbs after hand amputation from 15 amputees and 29 controls

  2020cites this paper
• Intensity of affective experience is modulated by magnitude of intracranial electrical stimulation in human orbitofrontal, cingulate and insular cortices

  2019cites this paper
• Intensity of affective experience is modulated by magnitude of intracranial electrical stimulation in human orbitofrontal, cingulate, and insular cortex

  2019cites this paper
• Locating primary somatosensory cortex in human brain stimulation studies: systematic review and meta-analytic evidence.

  2019cites this paper
• Predicting Empathy From Resting State Brain Connectivity: A Multivariate Approach

  2019cites this paper
• The Role of Sensorimotor Processes in Pain Empathy

  2019cites this paper
• Bayesian statistics show a lack of change in excitability following bihemispheric HD-TDCS over the primary somatosensory cortices

  2019cites this paper
• Can Transcranial Electrical Stimulation Localize Brain Function?

  2019cites this paper
• The Neural Basis of Empathy and Empathic Behavior in the Context of Chronic Trauma

  2019cites this paper
• What Neuromodulation and Lesion studies tell us about the function of the mirror neuron system and embodied cognition

  2018cites this paper
• How Brain Stimulation Techniques Can Affect Moral and Social Behaviour

  2018influential citation
• How Brain Stimulation Techniques Can Affect Moral and Social Behaviour

  2018cites this paper
• Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) Neural mechanisms of costly helping in the general population and mirror-pain synesthetes

  year unknowninfluential citation
• Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW)

  year unknowncites this paper
• Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) Endogenous opioid receptor system mediates costly altruism in the human brain

  year unknowncites this paper