1. Tania Singer Social Cognitive Neuroscience and the Example of Empathy
Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience
UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
University College of London

2. Topics in Social-Cognitive Neuroscience
How do we process and represent other
people’s minds and how do they influence
us?
Perception and memory of socially salient features (i.e. facial attractiveness, trustworthiness, emotional expressions)
Action observation (Imitation, mirror neurons)
Theory of Mind (TOM) & Mentalizing
Empathy
Moral emotions and moral and social reasoning
Self Concept, Distinction between Self and Others
Social Level
Behavioral Level
Cognitive Level
Neural Level
(e.g. facial expressions of emotions, attractiveness or trustworthiness, racial identity of faces, biological motions, eye gaze, odours, vocal cues)

3. Emotional Facial Expressions Familiar and Famous Faces
Perception of Socially Salient Features
Emotional Facial Expressions
Familiar and Famous Faces
Morris et al. (1986). Nature; Phillips et al., (1997). Nature.

4. Social Rewards: Attractive Faces
Mildly Happy
Neutral
O’Doherty et al. (2003). Neuropsychologia

5. Social Judgement: Trustworthiness of Faces
Task
Face
Trustworthy
Untrustworthy
Judge age
‘Implicit task’
Judge trustworthiness
‘Explicit task’
Parametric scale based on subjects own ratings
We designed an experiment in which Brothers’ model could be tested.
We presented 120 greyscale Caucasian male faces to 14 subjects whilst they underwent functional MRI scans. Faces depicted either school or university age students.
The minimum stimulus onset asynchrony was 3s, and 60 null events were interspersed with the faces, which were presented for one second each.
During scanning, subjects viewed half the faces and made a judgement of whether the face was that of a school-boy or university student and made a binary trustworthiness judgement on the other half of the faces. The order of these tasks was counterbalanced across subjects.
Following scanning, subjects viewed all faces again and provided a rating of trustworthiness for each face on a scale from 1-7.
fMRI data were analysed using SPM99 employing an event-related model and random effects statistics for population level inference.
Note that although the slide depicts the experimental design as 2X2, the factor of trustworthiness was in fact analysed parametrically in our analysis. This allowed us to find regions showing responses that increased or decreased with perceived trustworthiness of the face.
A great strength of this design is the use of the participants’ own ratings of the faces in the subsequent statistical analysis.
An independent, age-matched group of subjects additionally rated the faces for four basic emotions - anger, fear, happiness and sadness. These data were used to explore the potential confounds of facial expression on trustworthiness.
Winston et al. (2002). Nature Neuroscience

6. Socially Salient Cues of the Body:
Biological Motion

7. Brothers’ Extended Model of Social Cognition
General Findings
Brothers’ Extended Model of Social Cognition
Insula/somato-
sensory cortices
STS
Striatum
OFC
Fusiform
Amygdala

8. Adolphs Model of Social Cognition (2003)
Detailed perceptual
processing
Fusiform gyrus
Superior temporal gyrus
Motivational Evaluation
Amygdala
Orbito-frontal cortex
Ventral striatum
Emotional Response
in body
autonomic, visceral
endocrine change
Representation of
emotion response
Insula-somatosensory
cortices
Adolphs, R. (2003). Cognitive Neuroscience of Human Social Behavior. Nature Neuroscience Reviews

9. The Amygdala and its Modulatory Role

10. Social-Cognitive Neuroscience
Social Neuroscience provides insights into people’s ability to understand the mental states and share the feelings of others.
Three Streams of Research in Social Neuroscience
● Theory of Mind (TOM) & Mentalizing
● Action Observation, Imitation (Mirror Neurons) ● Empathy
(e.g. facial expressions of emotions, attractiveness or trustworthiness, racial identity of faces, biological motions, eye gaze, odours, vocal cues)

11. Modern Social Neuroscience: How do we Understand the Other ?
Theory of Mind (TOM) & Mentalizing
refers to our ability to understand mental states such as intentions, desires and believes of others.
Empathy
refers to our ability to share the feelings of others, be it a particular emotion or sensory state of the other.
(e.g. facial expressions of emotions, attractiveness or trustworthiness, racial identity of faces, biological motions, eye gaze, odours, vocal cues)

12. A Paradigm to Measure Empathy ‚In Vivo‘ Using the Example of Pain
The ‘Pain Matrix’ in the Brain
Singer et al. (2004). Science

13. Shared Networks for Pain in Self and Others
Y = 12
x = - 6
Bilateral
anterior insula
ACC
-0.2
-0.1
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8 10 15 20 25
Anterior Cingulate [-9, 6, 39]
r = 0.62
Empathy Scores
Left Anterior Insula [-33, 9, 6]
r = 0.52

14. Recent fMRI Studies on Empathy for Pain
Singer et al. (2004).
Y = 12
ACC
Bilateral
anterior insula
Morrison et al. (in 2004).
Seeing pictures of body parts in painful situations
Singer et al. (2006). Nature
Seeing facial
expressions of Pain 6
Jackson, Metzoff & Decety (2004). NeuroImage.
Botvinick et al. (in press).

15. fMRI Studies on Emotional Contagion
Wicker et al., Both the observation of disgusted faces and smelling disgusting odours activated the same restricted
group of brain structures, including the insula and ACC.
Keysers et al., Secondary but not the primary somatosensory cortex is activated when the participants were touched and when they observed someone or something else getting touched by objects.
but see Blakemore et al., 2005

16. Conclusion When empathizing with others’ affective states
we activate representations reflecting the same bodily states in ourselves. These shared affective representations allow us to know how it feels like for someone else to be for example in pain even in the absence of any stimulation to our own body

17. Modulation of Empathic Responses
Theories of social preferences predict that empathy should be modulated by the perceived fairness of other individuals, and that individual agents punish violations of social norms.
Thus, empathy should be reduced or abolished towards agents whose behaviour deemed socially unfair and thus whom we dislike.
Instead we might expect to observe evidence of ‘Schadenfreude’ – the feeling of satisfaction
experienced when social violators experience
punishment –as predicted by studies of
altruistic punishment

18. The Experimental Paradigm
Stage 1: Social learning
Subjects play repeated prisoners dilemma with 2 opponents – one fair, the other unfair
Stage 2: Empathy for Pain Paradigm
Subjects observe both players in an in-vivo empathy for pain study
Singer et al. (2004). Neuron
Singer et al. (2006). Nature

19. One Game of the Social Learning Phase
Investment
Waiting
Yes No
You have 10 Points
Do you want to send your money?
Decision
This is your playing partner
Pay-off
Your points 30
Your partners points
3 sec.
Wait for her decision
Prepare for the next game
3-12 sec.
Your Partner decided to send
You
10 points
3-6 sec.
3 sec.
Time Course of one Game
3 sec.

20. The Actors and the Experimental Setting

21. Ratings for Fair and Unfair Partner as a Function of Gender-2 -1 1 2
fair/
reason.
pleasant/
agreeable
attractive
sorry
like
Female Fair Confederate
Female Unfair Confederate
Male Fair Confederate
Male unfair Confederate

22. Conjunction Pain Self & Fair in Women
Left Fronto-Insular Cortex 1 2 3
Fair Player
Unfair Player
Parameter Estimates [ ]
Right Fronto-Insular Cortex 1 2 3
Fair Player
Unfair Player
Parameter Estimates [ ]
Right Fronto-Insular Cortex -1 1 2
Fair Player
Unfair Player
Parameter Estimates [ ]
Left Fronto-Insular Cortex -1 1 2
Fair Player
Unfair Player
Parameter Estimates [ ]

23. Evidence for Reward-related Activity? Pain Unfair – Pain Fair
Nucleus Accumbens
N.A.
Gender Differences: Men – Women for Unfair - Fair 2
N.A. 1
Parameter Estimates [ ]
Women
Men -1

24. Evidence for Correlations between Subjective Measures
Of Revenge and [Pain Unfair – Pain Fair] 1 2
Women
Men
Subjective Ratings: Desire for Revenge
Subjective Ratings -4 -2 2 4 -1 1 3
r = 0.68**
N.A.
Desire for Revenge
Nucleus Accumbens [ ]
r = 0.08 n.s.

25. Conclusions
Perceived fairness learned in social interactions strongly modulate empathic responses – seen in both behaviour and neural activity
Loss of empathic activity seen in AI / ACC is accompanied by activity in accumbens correlates with the expressed desired for revenge to unfair individuals (in men)
The data suggest gender difference which have to be pursued.
This may be part of proposed proximate mechanisms behind altruistic punishment
(e.g., social preference models,
models of strong reciprocity;
Boyd, Camerer, Gintis, Fehr, Gaechter, Rabin).

26. THE END
Thanks to:
Chris and Uta Frith
Ray Dolan
Geoff Bird
John O'Doherty
Klaas Enno Stephan
Ben Seymour

29. Gender Difference & Intercorrelation
Revenge Composite:
Gender Difference & Intercorrelation
Female Unfair Conspecific
Male Unfair Conspecific -1 1 2
unsorry
angry
deserved
Pain
revenge *
n.s. * *
Rev. Angry Deser. Unsorry
Rev ** ** **
Angry .69** * *
Deserv. .95** * *
Unsorry .76** ** 1

30. An fMRI study on ‘In Vivo’
Experimental Set-up:
An fMRI study on ‘In Vivo’

31. Trial Structure and Experimental Design
Self
Other
Cue
Stimulation
3.5 Sec.
Jitter
High
Low
4 Sec.
2 Sec.