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H2020Individual fellowship2017–2019

MEMPATHY · At first INsight: how our memories shape empathy for others’ physical pain

Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Duration
2017-02-01 → 2019-03-14
EU contribution
€183,455
Participants
1
Scheme
MSCA-IF-EF-ST

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Results in brief

At first INsight: how our memories shape empathy for others’ physical pain

MEMPATHY’s objective was to determine whether we use our past experiences (i.e., autobiographical memory) when empathizing with others’ physical pain. Empathy is the ability to share and to understand others’ inner states and thoughts. Autobiographical memory defines who we are. Both empathy and autobiographical memory collected through past social interactions are a building block of human social cognition and therefore have a huge impact on new interacting behavior that ultimately nourishes a sense of inclusion and integration. In a European society characterized by migration enhancement and demographic disparity, such as ageing population, diversity, discrimination and psychological distance are in the spotlight. Addressing issues related to the ability to reduce borders between individuals, i.e. empathy, has the final aim of promoting solidarity and cooperation through effective human interactions. Since both memories and empathy contribute to improve social interactions, MEMPATHY aimed at providing a crucial increase of knowledge by studying the relation between autobiographical memory and empathy. However, providing a clear-cut picture of how our past experiences influence our ability to empathize with others is transversely crucial not only to inform theories of empathy and memory, but it has the ultimate goal of informing all those professions that work with people in need, as in the health and social sectors.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

Empathy is a multifaceted concept. It mostly relies on the ability to mirror and to explicitly infer others’ inner states. The simulation-theory (ST) account of Theory of Mind (ToM) suggests that people build an accurate representation of others’ inner states by using one’s own mind as a model, i.e. internally simulating others’ mind; for Theory-Theory (TT) such a representation is formed on the basis of common knowledge. Accumulating evidence supported the idea that our memories interact with empathy in building a representation of others’ inner states. In a series of two experiments, the current proposal is aimed at determining how, if any, the recruitment of autobiographical memory occurs when we empathize with others’ emotional experience, such as physical pain. Connectivity analysis applied to oscillatory activity, such as pattern similarity analysis, revealed that neural patterns present during memory formation are reactivated during memory retrieval, thus being a powerful tool to monitor a memory trace. By further combining excellent temporal resolution of electrophysiological measures and the excellent spatial resolution of functional imaging data in a multimodal EEG-fMRI recording, MEMPATHY aimed at establishing whether our memories are reactivated when we empathize with others' pain even when reactivation of our memories is detrimental to build an accurate representation of others’ pain. Importantly, by means of multi-modal neuroimaging measures and connectivity analysis, the proposal will allow to individuate the pathway and the direction of the dynamic communication within the brain network underlying memory and empathic processes.

Original text from CORDIS.

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Data: CORDIS, © European Union