Conclusion
In this chapter, we have adopted a cognitive-affective neuroscience perspective on compassion.
We have distinguished a narrow notion of compassion as a fleeting emotional-motivational state
from a broader notion of compassion as an attitude to life. We have decomposed compassion as
an attitude to life into subprocesses that fall into three domains: presence, affect and perspective.
Presence forms the foundation for the skills and dispositions of the other domains. It comprises
attentional control and stability as well as internal bodily awareness (interoception) and is
subserved by fronto-parietal networks and the insula. The other two domains divide compassion-
related skills and dispositions into cognitive (perspective) and emotional (affect) processes. This
follows the division of their underlying brain circuitries: whereas metacognitive and cognitive
perspective-taking processes on the self and others are associated with late-developing frontal and
parietal brain regions (e.g., medial prefrontal cortex, temporo-parietal junction, precuneus) the
socio-affective processes associated with prosocial motivation, positive affect, affiliation,
benevolence and emotional awareness are rather rooted in old motivational systems associated
with functions of the somatosensory, interoceptive and limbic cortices that develop early in life
.
Compassion research is in its very early days. Future conceptual and empirical work will have to
further delineate the subcomponents of compassion and their underlying neuronal and neuro-
endocrinological systems. We hope that this research can be guided by and will in turn help to
refine the rough framework outlined in this short chapter.
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