AUTHOR=Bufalari Ilaria , Ionta Silvio TITLE=The social and personality neuroscience of empathy for pain and touch JOURNAL=Frontiers in Human Neuroscience VOLUME=7 YEAR=2013 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00393 DOI=10.3389/fnhum.2013.00393 ISSN=1662-5161 ABSTRACT=

First- and third-person experiences of bodily sensations, like pain and touch, recruit overlapping neural networks including sensorimotor, insular, and anterior cingulate cortices. Here we illustrate the peculiar role of these structures in coding the sensory and affective qualities of the observed bodily sensations. Subsequently we show that such neural activity is critically influenced by a range of social, emotional, cognitive factors, and importantly by inter-individual differences in the separate components of empathic traits. Finally we suggest some fundamental issues that social neuroscience has to address for providing a comprehensive knowledge of the behavioral, functional and anatomical brain correlates of empathy.