Trait Empathy Shapes Neural Responses Toward Sad Music

Taruffi, L.; Skouras, S.; Pehrs, C.; Koelsch, S.

doi:10.3758/s13415-020-00861-x

Trait Empathy Shapes Neural Responses Toward Sad Music

Taruffi, L.; Skouras, S.; Pehrs, C.; Koelsch, S.

Authors

Dr Liila Taruffi liila.taruffi@durham.ac.uk
Honorary Fellow

S. Skouras

C. Pehrs

S. Koelsch

Abstract

Individuals with a predisposition to empathize engage with sad music in a compelling way, experiencing overall more pleasurable emotions. However, the neural mechanisms underlying these music-related experiences in empathic individuals are unknown. The present study tested whether dispositional empathy modulates neural responses to sad compared with happy music. Twenty-four participants underwent fMRI while listening to 4-min blocks of music evoking sadness or happiness. Using voxel-wise regression, we found a positive correlation between trait empathy (with scores assessed by the Interpersonal Reactivity Index) and eigenvector centrality values in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), including the medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC). We then performed a functional connectivity (FC) analysis to detect network nodes showing stronger FC with the vmPFC/mOFC during the presentation of sad versus happy music. By doing so, we identified a “music-empathy” network (vmPFC/mOFC, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, primary visual cortex, bilateral claustrum and putamen, and cerebellum) that is spontaneously recruited while listening to sad music and includes brain regions that support the coding of compassion, mentalizing, and visual mental imagery. Importantly, our findings extend the current understanding of empathic behaviors to the musical domain and pinpoint sad music as an effective stimulus to be employed in social neuroscience research.

Citation

Taruffi, L., Skouras, S., Pehrs, C., & Koelsch, S. (2021). Trait Empathy Shapes Neural Responses Toward Sad Music. Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience, 21(1), 231-241. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-020-00861-x

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Dec 20, 2020
Online Publication Date	Jan 20, 2021
Publication Date	2021-02
Deposit Date	Oct 6, 2021
Publicly Available Date	Oct 6, 2021
Journal	Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience
Print ISSN	1530-7026
Electronic ISSN	1531-135X
Publisher	Psychonomic Society
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	21
Issue	1
Pages	231-241
DOI	https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-020-00861-x

Files

Published Journal Article (596 Kb)
PDF

Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.