The sensorimotor side of empathy for pain

Alessio Avenanti

pp. 235-256

in: Mauro Mancia (ed), Psychoanalysis and neuroscience, Berlin, Springer, 2006

Abstract

This chapter revolves around the phenomena and neural mechanisms underlying the human capability to empathize with the actions, emotions, and feelings of other individuals. Special attention is paid to the neural activity induced by observation and imagination of others' pain. It will be shown that representing others' pain brings about the activation of neural structures largely overlapping with those activated during the experience of pain on oneself and that neural structures involved in both emotional and sensorimotor processing may be recruited during empathy for pain.