TY - JOUR

T1 - Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) item analysis of empathy and theory of mind

AU - Tholen, Matthias G.

AU - Trautwein, Fynn Mathis

AU - Böckler, Anne

AU - Singer, Tania

AU - Kanske, Philipp

N1 - Funding Information: This study forms part of the ReSource Project, headed by Tania Singer. Data for this project were collected between 2013 and 2016 at the former Department of Social Neuroscience at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences Leipzig. Tania Singer (Principal Investigator) received funding for the ReSource Project from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Community's Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007?2013) ERC grant agreement number 205557. M.G.T. is supported by the Austrian Science Fund's Doctoral College ?Imaging the Mind? (FWF-W1233). P.K. is supported by German Federal Ministry of Education and Research within the ASD-Net (BMBF FKZ 01EE1409A), the German Research Council (Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize KA 4412/1-1) and Die Junge Akademie at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. We wish to thank the entire ReSource support team for help in the organization of the study, in particular, we thank Nicole Pampus, Manuela Hoffmann and Sylvie Neubert for help with the data acquisition. The data of this study are available from the authors upon reasonable request.

PY - 2020/7/14

Y1 - 2020/7/14

N2 - In contrast to conventional functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) analysis across participants, item analysis allows generalizing the observed neural response patterns from a specific stimulus set to the entire population of stimuli. In the present study, we perform an item analysis on an fMRI paradigm (EmpaToM) that measures the neural correlates of empathy and Theory of Mind (ToM). The task includes a large stimulus set (240 emotional vs. neutral videos to probe empathic responding and 240 ToM or factual reasoning questions to probe ToM), which we tested in two large participant samples (N = 178, N = 130). Both, the empathy-related network comprising anterior insula, anterior cingulate/dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, inferior frontal gyrus, and dorsal temporoparietal junction/supramarginal gyrus (TPJ) and the ToM related network including ventral TPJ, superior temporal gyrus, temporal poles, and anterior and posterior midline regions, were observed across participants and items. Regression analyses confirmed that these activations are predicted by the empathy or ToM condition of the stimuli, but not by low-level features such as video length, number of words, syllables or syntactic complexity. The item analysis also allowed for the selection of the most effective items to create optimized stimulus sets that provide the most stable and reproducible results. Finally, reproducibility was shown in the replication of all analyses in the second participant sample. The data demonstrate (a) the generalizability of empathy and ToM related neural activity and (b) the reproducibility of the EmpaToM task and its applicability in intervention and clinical imaging studies.

AB - In contrast to conventional functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) analysis across participants, item analysis allows generalizing the observed neural response patterns from a specific stimulus set to the entire population of stimuli. In the present study, we perform an item analysis on an fMRI paradigm (EmpaToM) that measures the neural correlates of empathy and Theory of Mind (ToM). The task includes a large stimulus set (240 emotional vs. neutral videos to probe empathic responding and 240 ToM or factual reasoning questions to probe ToM), which we tested in two large participant samples (N = 178, N = 130). Both, the empathy-related network comprising anterior insula, anterior cingulate/dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, inferior frontal gyrus, and dorsal temporoparietal junction/supramarginal gyrus (TPJ) and the ToM related network including ventral TPJ, superior temporal gyrus, temporal poles, and anterior and posterior midline regions, were observed across participants and items. Regression analyses confirmed that these activations are predicted by the empathy or ToM condition of the stimuli, but not by low-level features such as video length, number of words, syllables or syntactic complexity. The item analysis also allowed for the selection of the most effective items to create optimized stimulus sets that provide the most stable and reproducible results. Finally, reproducibility was shown in the replication of all analyses in the second participant sample. The data demonstrate (a) the generalizability of empathy and ToM related neural activity and (b) the reproducibility of the EmpaToM task and its applicability in intervention and clinical imaging studies.

KW - affect sharing

KW - anterior insula

KW - mentalizing

KW - social cognition

KW - temporoparietal junction

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85080997042&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1002/hbm.24966

DO - 10.1002/hbm.24966

M3 - Article

C2 - 32115820

AN - SCOPUS:85080997042

VL - 41

SP - 2611

EP - 2628

JO - Human brain mapping

JF - Human brain mapping

SN - 1065-9471

IS - 10

ER -