Felt and observed pain have shared distributed representations in human anterior insula

old_uid9431
titleFelt and observed pain have shared distributed representations in human anterior insula
start_date2010/12/14
schedule10h30-12h
onlineno
location_infosalle 127
summaryThe discovery of regions in the human brain (e.g. the anterior insula) active both under direct exposure to pain and whist perceiving pain in others has been interpreted as the neural signature of empathy. However, limitations of current techniques for human brain investigation raise the question of whether this effect is reflective a unique distributed population of bimodal neurons or, alternatively, of the activity of intermingled but independent populations. We discovered, at the level of the anterior insula, that the spatial distribution of cortical activity in response to painful stimulations on one’s hand resembled the distribution associated with visual processing of others’ hands in pain. Our data speak in favor of a unique distributed population of insular neurons coding both one’s and others’ pain.
responsiblesBenguigui