Childhood emotional invalidation and right hemispheric mu suppression during a pain empathy task: An EEG study

ABSTRACT

Empathy is a critical aspect of social behavior, and impairment in empathic processing is linked to hindered social interactions and several disorders. Despite much interest in this topic, our understanding of the developmental and neural involvement for empathic processing is limited. Recent evidence suggests the Mirror Neuron System (MNS) may play a role in this behavior, and that mu rhythm suppression found over the sensorimotor cortices may be a proxy for the MNS. Therefore, we aimed to measure mu rhythm oscillations in response to empathic processing during observation of painful action-based situations using electroencephalogram (EEG). Our second goal was to examine how perceived parental emotional invalidation (EI) during childhood may relate to empathy and influence mu suppression. Our results showed that mu rhythm suppression was strongest over the right hemisphere. EI had a significant influence on this suppression between painful and non-painful images, and was negatively correlated with behavioral measures of empathy. Our findings suggest that perceived childhood EI may decrease empathizing abilities and influence neural responses to the painful experiences of others. Implications from this study could entail clinical intervention targeted at emotional invalidation to foster the healthy development of empathy.

KEYWORDS:

• Mu rhythm
• mirror neuron system
• pain empathy
• emotional invalidation
• EEG

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Dr. Philip Jackson for allowing us access to the pain empathy task stimuli set. Also, we thank Cara Lynne Culpepper and Matthew Tyra for their assistance in data collection, and we are grateful for all the participants who volunteered for our study.

Disclosure statement

The authors state no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Advanced Support for Innovative Research Excellence award from the Office of the Vice President for Research, University of South Carolina.