These findings suggest that the cultivation of compassion engages a neural network that is distinct
from activations found in previous empathy studies focusing on sharing the pain of others. In order
to investigate whether empathy and compassion can be distinguished on a neural level, we
conducted a short-term intervention study in which the same group of participants was first trained
in empathy and, only after a subsequent test, received compassion training
. In order to control
for unspecific training effects, the changes in this group were compared with the memory control
group. On the level of self-reports, training empathic resonance increased negative affect and
empathy. Remarkably, negative affect was increased in response to both people in distress and
even to people in everyday life situations. In other words, empathy training increased the
propensity to react to normal everyday situations with negative affect. On the neural level, empathy
training increased activations in AI and aMCC – as described above, regions which have
repeatedly been involved when meditation-naïve participants empathized with the suffering of
others. This suggests that the sensitization to suffering observed on the level of self-reports was
paralleled in the brain. Together, these findings underline the belief that engaging in empathic
resonance is a highly aversive experience and, as such, can be a risk factor for burnout.
Fortunately, the subsequent compassion training could reverse these effects by decreasing
negative affect back to baseline and – like in the first study – by strengthening positive emotions. It
is notable that compassion again induced this combination of strong positive affect along with
normal levels of negative affect. This emphasizes that compassion does not lead to the denial of
suffering but enables people to experience positive emotions, in spite of another person’s difficulty.
On the neural level, compassion induced entirely different activations than did empathy. These
activations occurred in medial orbitofrontal cortex, ventral striatum and pregenual anterior
cingulate cortex, which together form a network related to positive emotions
affiliation and
love
and reward
.
In summary, bridging first- and third-person perspective in research with an expert meditator and
novice meditators helped to dissociate empathy and compassion as two distinct social emotions
and motivations. During the initial investigation of empathy in an expert meditator, Matthieu
Ricard’s self-reports and the comparison of his brain activation with previous findings in non-
meditation experts yielded crucial insights. These findings led to the formulation of a model that
conceptualized empathy and compassion as two very distinct inner states with potentially very
different consequences for subjective well-being and health. Pursuing this line of research in a
training study with novice meditators helped to put this intuition on solid scientific ground. Here,
quantitative and qualitative first-person self-reports elucidated how feeling states changed through
training empathy or compassion. These self-reports also shed light on the relationship between
emotions and observed neural activations. We thus saw that empathy was accompanied by
negative affect and stronger activations in neural areas involved in negative affect and empathy for
pain. Generally, compassion training strengthened positive affect, prosocial behavior and neural
activity related to affiliation, love, and positive emotions. It therefore seems that while empathic
resonance may lead to empathic distress, compassion offers a trainable strategy for increasing
prosociality and overcoming adverse experiences by strengthening resilience.
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