(Mascaro 2013)

Title: Compassion meditation enhances empathic accuracy and related neural activity.

DOI or Website Link:

Publication: Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci.

Authors:

Date: 2012 Sep 5.

Affiliation(s):

Citation:

Abstract:

The ability to accurately infer others' mental states from facial expressions is important for optimal social functioning and is fundamentally impaired in social cognitive disorders such as autism. While pharmacologic interventions have shown promise for enhancing empathic accuracy, little is known about the effects of behavioral interventions on empathic accuracy and related brain activity.

This study employed a randomized, controlled and longitudinal design to investigate the effect of a secularized analytical compassion meditation program, cognitive-based compassion training (CBCT), on empathic accuracy. Twenty-one healthy participants received functional MRI scans while completing an empathic accuracy task, the

Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET), both prior to and after completion of either CBCT or a health discussion control group. Upon completion of the study interventions, participants randomized to CBCT and were significantly more likely than control subjects to have increased scores on the RMET and increased neural activity in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC).

Moreover, changes in dmPFC and IFG activity from baseline to the post-intervention assessment were associated with changes in empathic accuracy. These findings suggest that CBCT may hold promise as a behavioral intervention for enhancing empathic accuracy and the neurobiology supporting it.

Topic Area:

(In which field / sector / perspective was this study conducted?)

Definition:

(How was empathy defined?)

Benefits:

(Were any benefits of empathy mentioned?)

Methods:

(What were the methods used to train empathy?)

    • meditation program

  • Tibetan: lojong meditation

  • cognitive-based compassion training (CBCT)

  • mindful-awareness (i.e. vipassana)

Target Group:

(Who participated in this study / training?)

  • Twenty-one healthy participants

Measurements:

(About the assessment: How was the change in empathy measured before/after the intervention/method?)

  • Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET)

Result:

(What was the result?)

  • after the meditation participants were better at Mind in the Eyes Test

Posted By: Edwin Rutsch

Notes:

(Any other relevant information)

  • *try and get a copy of their detailed training curriculum

References:

  • Adams RB, Jr, Rule NO, Franklin RG, Jr, et al. Cross-cultural reading the mind in the eyes: an fMRI investigation. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.2010;22(1):97–108. [PubMed]

  • Allison T, Puce A, McCarthy G. Social perception from visual cues: role of the STS region. Trends in Cognitive Science. 2000;4:267–78. [PubMed]

  • Baron-Cohen S. Mindblindness: An Essay on Autism and Theory of Mind.Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press; 1995.

  • Baron-Cohen S, Ring H, Chitnis X, et al. fMRI of parents of children with Asperger syndrome: a pilot study. Brain and Cognition. 2006;61(1):122–30.[PubMed]

  • Baron-Cohen S, Ring HA, Wheelwright S, et al. Social intelligence in the normal and autistic brain: an fMRI study. European Journal of Neuroscience.1999;11(6):1891–8. [PubMed]

  • Baron-Cohen S, Wheelwright S, Hill J, Raste Y, Plumb I. The “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” test revised version: a study with normal adults, and adults with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. 2001;42(2):241–51. [PubMed]

  • Batson CD. Altruism and Prosocial behavior. In: Gilbert D, Fiske S, Lindsey G, editors. The Handbook of Social Psychology. Boston: McGraw-Hill; 1998. pp. 282–316.

  • Beck AT, Epstein N, Brown G, Steer RA. An inventory for measuring clinical anxiety: psychometric properties. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. 1988;56(6):893–7. [PubMed]

  • Beck AT, Ward CH, Mendelson M, Mock J, Erbaugh J. An inventory for measuring depression. Archives of General Psychiatry. 1961;4(6):561–71.[PubMed]

  • Carr L, Iacoboni M, Dubeau MC, Mazziotta JC, Lenzi GL. Neural mechanisms of empathy in humans: a relay from neural systems for imitation to limbic areas.Proceedings of the National Acadmy of Sciences USA. 2003;100:5497–502.[PMC free article] [PubMed]

  • Caspers S, Zilles K, Laird AR, Eickhoff SB. ALE meta-analysis of action observation and imitation in the human brain. Neuroimage. 2010;50(3):1148–67. [PubMed]

  • Cheng Y, Meltzoff AN, Decety J. Motivation modulates the activity of the human mirror-neuron system. Cerebral Cortex. 2007;17(8):1979–1986. [PubMed]

  • Churchland PS, Winkielman P. Modulating social behavior with oxytocin: how does it work? What does it mean? Hormones and Behavior. 2012;61(3):392–9.[PMC free article] [PubMed]

  • Dapretto M, Davies MS, Pfeifer JH, et al. Understanding emotions in others: mirror neuron dysfunction in children with autism spectrum disorders. Nature Neuroscience. 2006;9(1):28–30. [PMC free article] [PubMed]

  • Davis MH, Franzoi SL. Stability and change in adolescent self-consciousness and empathy. Journal of Research in Personality. 1991;25(1):70–87.

  • Davis MH, Kraus LA. Personality and empathic accuracy. In: Ickes W, editor.Empathic Accuracy. New York: The Guilford Press; 1997. p. 352.

  • Domes G, Heinrichs M, Michel A, Berger C, Herpertz SC. Oxytocin improves "mind-reading" in humans. Biological Psychiatry. 2007;61(6):731–3. [PubMed]

  • Dronkers NF, Wilkins DP, Van Valin RD, Jr, Redfern BB, Jaeger JJ. Lesion analysis of the brain areas involved in language comprehension. Cognition.2004;92(1–2):145–77. [PubMed]

  • Flury J, Ickes W. Emotional intelligence and empathic accuracy in friendships and dating relationships. In: Ciarrochi J, Forgas JP, Mayer JD, editors. Emotional Intelligence in Everyday Life. 2nd edn. New York: Psychology Press; 2006. pp. 140–65.

  • Gallese V, Fadiga L, Fogassi L, Rizzolatti G. Action recognition in the premotor cortex. Brain. 1996;119(2):593–609. [PubMed]

  • Gleason KA, Jensen-Campbell LA, Ickes W. The role of empathic accuracy in adolescents' peer relations and adjustment. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 2009;35(8):997–1011. [PubMed]

  • Guastella AJ, Einfeld SL, Gray KM, et al. Intranasal oxytocin improves emotion recognition for youth with autism spectrum disorders. Biological Psychiatry.2010;67(7):692–4. [PubMed]

  • Haxby JV, Hoffman EA, Gobbini MI. The distributed human neural system for face perception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 2000;4(6):223–33. [PubMed]

  • The Dalai Lama. The world of Tibetan Buddhism: An Overview of Its Philosophy and Practice. Boston: Wisdom Publications; 1995.

  • The Dalai Lama. An Open Heart. New York: Little Brown and Company; 2001.

  • Hill EL, Frith U. Understanding autism: insights from mind and brain.Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences. 2003;358(1430):281–9.[PMC free article] [PubMed]

  • Hutcherson CA, Seppala EM, Gross JJ. Loving-kindness meditation increases social connectedness. Emotion. 2008;8(5):720–4. [PubMed]

  • Iacoboni M, Dapretto M. The mirror neuron system and the consequences of its dysfunction. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. 2006;7(12):942–51. [PubMed]

  • Ickes W. Empathic accuracy: its links to clinical, cognitive, developmental, social, and physiological psychology. In: Decety J, Ickes W, editors. The Social Neuroscience of Empathy. Cambridge: The MIT Press; 2009. pp. 57–70.

  • Keuken MC, Hardie A, Dorn BT, et al. The role of the left inferior frontal gyrus in social perception: an rTMS study. Brain Research. 2011;1383:196–205.[PubMed]

  • Klein KJK, Hodges SD. Gender differences, motivation, and empathic accuracy: when it pays to understand. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.2001;27(6):720–30.

  • Klimecki OM, Leiberg S, Lamm C, Singer T. 2012 Functional neural plasticity and associated changes in positive affect after compassion training. Cerebral Cortex, epub ahead of print available June 1, 2012. Retrieved from http://cercor.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/05/31/cercor.bhs142.short.

  • Leiberg S, Klimecki O, Singer T. Short-term compassion training increases prosocial behavior in a newly developed prosocial game. Plos One.2011;6(3):e17798. [PMC free article] [PubMed]

  • Lieberman MD. Social cognitive neuroscience: a review of core processes. Annual Review of Psychology. 2007;58(1):259–89. [PubMed]

  • Lutz A, Brefczynski-Lewis J, Johnstone T, Davidson RJ. Regulation of the neural circuitry of emotion by compassion meditation: effects of meditative expertise.PLoS ONE. 2008;3(3):e1897. [PMC free article] [PubMed]

  • Lutz A, Greischar LL, Perlman DM, Davidson RJ. BOLD signal in insula is differentially related to cardiac function during compassion meditation in experts vs. novices. Neuroimage. 2009;47(3):1038–46. [PMC free article][PubMed]

  • Mitchell JP, Macrae CN, Mahzarin RB. Dissociable medial prefrontal contributions to judgments of similar and dissimilar others. Neuron.2006;50(4):655–663. [PubMed]

  • Mascaro J. Pre-existing Brain Function Predicts Subsequent Practice of Mindfulness and Compassion Meditation. Manuscript under review. [PubMed]

  • Pace TWW, Negi LT, Adame DD, et al. Effect of compassion meditation on neuroendocrine, innate immune and behavioral responses to psychosocial stress. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2009;34(1):87–98. [PMC free article][PubMed]

  • Rizzolatti G, Fadiga L, Gallese V, Fogassi L. Premotor cortex and the recognition of motor actions. Cognitive Brain Research. 1996;3(2):131–41. [PubMed]

  • Rodrigues SM, Saslow LR, Garcia N, John OP, Keltner D. Oxytocin receptor genetic variation relates to empathy and stress reactivity in humans.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. 2009;106(50):21437–41. [PMC free article] [PubMed]

  • Russell TA, Rubia K, Bullmore ET, et al. Exploring the social drain in schizophrenia: left prefrontal underactivation during mental state attribution.American Journal of Psychiatry. 2000;157(12):2040–2. [PubMed]

  • Schulte-Ruther M, Markowitsch HJ, Fink GR, Piefke M. Mirror neuron and theory of mind mechanisms involved in face-to-face interactions: a functional magnetic resonance imaging approach to empathy. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 2007;19(8):1354–72. [PubMed]

  • Simpson JA, Oriña MM, Ickes W. When accuracy hurts, and when it helps: a test of the empathic accuracy model in marital interactions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2003;85(5):881–93. [PubMed]

  • Singer T, Snozzi R, Bird G, et al. Effects of oxytocin and prosocial behavior on brain responses to direct and vicariously experienced pain. Emotion.2008;8(6):781–91. [PMC free article] [PubMed]

  • Slavich GM, Way BM, Eisenberger NI, Taylor SE. Neural sensitivity to social rejection is associated with inflammatory responses to social stress.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. 2010;107(33):14817–22. [PMC free article] [PubMed]

  • Talairach J, Tournoux P. Co-Planar Stereotaxic Atlas of the Human Brain. New York: Thieme Medical; 1988.

  • Turken AU, Dronkers NF. The neural architecture of the language comprehension network: converging evidence from lesion and connectivity analyses. Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. 2011;5(1):1–20. [PMC free article] [PubMed]

  • Twenge JM, Baumeister RF, DeWall CN, Ciarocco NJ, Bartels JM. Social exclusion decreases prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2007;92(1):56–66. [PubMed]

  • Vigneau M, Beaucousin V, Hervé PY, et al. Meta-analyzing left hemisphere language areas: phonology, semantics, and sentence processing. Neuroimage.2006;30(4):1414–32. [PubMed]

  • Wallace BA. Intersubjectivity in Indo-Tibetan buddhism. Journal of Consciousness Studies. 2001;8(5–7):209–30.

  • Yirmiya N, Erel O, Shaked M, Solomonica-Levi D. Meta-analyses comparing theory of mind abilities of individuals with autism, individuals with mental retardation, and normally developing individuals. Psychological Bulletin.1998;124(3):283–307. [PubMed]

  • Zaki J, Weber J, Bolger N, Ochsner K. The neural bases of empathic accuracy.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. 2009;106(27):11382–7. [PMC free article] [PubMed]