Neuroanatomical basis of concern-based altruism in virtual environment

NEUROPSYCHOLOGIA

卷:116

Article

Patil, Indrajeet^1,2  Zanon, Marco³  Novernbre, Giovanni⁴  Zangrando, Nicola⁵  Chittaro, Luca⁵  Silani, Giorgia⁶ 

[1] Scuola Int Super Studi Avanzati, Neurosci Sect, Trieste, Italy

[2] Harvard Univ, Dept Psychol, 33 Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA

[3] Univ Bologna, Ctr Studies & Res Cognit Neurosci, Bologna, Italy

[4] Linkoping Univ, CSAN, Dept Clin & Expt Med, Linkoping, Sweden

[5] Univ Udine, Dept Math Comp Sci & Phys, Human Comp Interact Lab, Udine, Italy

[6] Univ Vienna, Dept Appl Psychol Hlth Dev Enhancement & Interven, Vienna, Austria

关键词: Empathy;    Altruism;    Prosocial;    Morphometry;    Empathic concern;    Moral;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.02.015

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

Costly altruism entails helping others at a cost to the self and prior work shows that empathic concern (EC) for the well-being of distressed and vulnerable individuals is one of the primary motivators of such behavior. However, extant work has investigated costly altruism with paradigms that did not feature self-relevant and severe costs for the altruist and have solely focused on neurofunctional, and not neuroanatomical, correlates. In the current study, we used a contextually-rich virtual reality environment to study costly altruism and found that individuals who risked their own lives in the virtual world to try to save someone in danger had enlarged right anterior insula and exhibited greater empathic concern than those who did not. These findings add to the growing literature showing the role of caring motivation in promoting altruism and prosociality and its neural correlates in the right anterior insula.

【 授权许可】

Free