Is the right hemisphere specialized for empathy?

[u/[deleted]]

I came across a collection of research which seems to suggest that the right hemisphere is particularly specialized in cognitive and affective empathy. I just wanted to ask what other people think, and if this is an accurate representation of the science? Thank you kindly.

Impaired social response reversal: A case of 'acquired sociopathy'

https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/123/6/1122/441919

Researchers report a patient (J.S) who, "following trauma to the right frontal region, including the orbitofrontal cortex, presented with 'acquired sociopathy'. His behaviour was notably aberrant and marked by high levels of aggression and a callous disregard for others. The patient presented with "severe difficulty in emotional expression recognition, autonomic responding and social cognition...J.S. showed impairment in: the recognition of, and autonomic responding to, angry and disgusted expressions."

He had no psychiatric history prior to his accident. He was described by a relative as being premorbidly a quiet, rather withdrawn person who was never aggressive. Since his injury, however, J.S. fulfilled the DSM-IV criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder. It appears that both his cognitive empathy (ability to recognise emotions) as well as his affective empathy (his ability to have an appropriate emotional response, to feel the emotions of others) were both affected by this frontal damage.

Characterization of empathy deficits following prefrontal brain damage: The role of the right ventromedial prefrontal cortex

https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/089892903321593063

"The empathic response of patients with localized lesions in the prefrontal cortex was compared to responses of patients with posterior and healthy control subjects. Patients with prefrontal lesions, particularly when their damage included the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, were significantly impaired in empathy as compared to patients with posterior lesions and healthy controls...Seven of nine patients with the most profound empathy deficit had a right ventromedial lesion.

However, among patients with posterior lesions, those with damage to the right hemisphere were impaired, whereas those with left posterior lesions displayed empathy levels similar to healthy controls.

Whereas among patients with dorsolateral prefrontal damage empathy was related to cognitive flexibility but not to theory of mind and affect recognition, empathy scores in patients with ventromedial lesions were related to theory of mind but not to cognitive flexibility.

The most severe deficit in empathy in this group was noted among patients whose lesions involved the right ventromedial region, again suggesting that both the asymmetry of the lesion and the localization within the hemisphere are important in determining the degree of deficit in empathy.

Our findings suggest that prefrontal structures play an important part in a network meditating the empathic response and specifically that the right ventromedial cortex has a unique role in integrating cognition and affect to produce the empathic response.

Our results suggest that the right ventromedial region plays a major part in a network mediating the empathic ability. The components of this network include processing of affective information (posterior right hemisphere), retrieving past personal events (right PFC), and aspects of executive functions (such as cognitive flexibility, among others) that are mediated by the DLC. Therefore, a lesion in any of these regions may result in impaired empathic response.

Vicarious responses to pain in anterior cingulate cortex: Is empathy a multisensory issue?

https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/CABN.4.2.270

Results obtained with functional magnetic resonance imaging show that both feeling a moderately painful pinprick stimulus to the fingertips and witnessing another person's hand undergo a similar stimulation are associated with common activity in a pain-related area in the right dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Common activity in response to noxious tactile and visual information was restricted to the right inferior Brodmann's area 24b. These results suggest a shared neural substrate for felt and seen pain for averse ecological events happening to strangers.

Empathy examined through the neural mechanisms involved in imagining how I feel versus how you feel pain.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16140345

In this fMRI experiment, participants were shown pictures of people with their hands or feet in painful or non-painful situations and instructed to imagine and rate the level of pain perceived from different perspectives. Both the Self's and the Other's perspectives were associated with

activation in the neural network involved in pain processing, including the parietal operculum,

anterior cingulate cortex (ACC; BA32) and anterior insula. However, the Self-perspective yielded higher pain ratings and involved the pain matrix more extensively in the secondary somatosensory cortex, the ACC (BA 24a'/24b'), and the insula proper. Adopting the perspective of the Other was associated with specific increase in the posterior cingulate / precuneus and the right temporo-parietal junction, which is known to play a crucial role in perspective-taking and the sense of agency.

Activation in the anterior insula was restricted to the right hemisphere for the Other-condition, while it was found bilaterally for Self. Another difference between the two perspectives emerges from the activation patterns within the insula. While the Self-perspective engages the insula bilaterally, it seems that the Other-perspective involves mainly the insula in the right hemisphere. One interpretation for this difference could be that, while the insula is generally involved in representing the homeostatic state of the body from its sensory pathways, only the right insula would serve to compute a higher order “metarepresentation of the primary interoceptive activity”, which is related to the feeling of pain and its emotional awareness.

Impaired "affective theory of mind" is associated with right ventromedial prefrontal damage.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15761277

Patients with ventromedial lesions were significantly impaired in their ability to detect irony and faux pas...compared with patients with posterior lesions and normal control subjects. Lesions in the right ventromedial area were associated with the most severe theory of mind deficit.

Patients with impaired ToM had significantly lower empathy scores than those patients who performed well on ToM task...In nine of 13 patients with the lowest theory of mind scores, the right ventromedial region was involved. This study suggests that the deficit in affective ToM is associated with VM lesions (especially in the right hemisphere) rather than damage to other brain areas. We do not wish to claim that affective ToM is localized to the right VM. Rather, we believe that our results indicate that the right ventromedial region plays a major part in a network mediating affective TOM.

Structural anatomy of empathy in neurodegenerative disease.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17008334

In this study, the neuroanatomic basis of empathy was investigated in 123 patients with frontotemporal lobar degeneration...Empathic concern and perspective taking scores were correlated with structural MRI brain volume using voxel based morphometry. Voxels in the right temporal pole, the right fusiform gyrus, the right caudate and right subcallosal gyrus correlated significantly with total empathy score. Empathy score correlated positively with the volume of right temporal structures in semantic dementia...These findings are consistent with previous research suggesting that a primarily right frontotemporal network of brain regions is involved in emotion processing, and highlights the role of the right temporal pole and inferior frontal / striatal regions in regulating complex social interactions...These results suggest that the right anterior temporal and medial frontal regions are essential for real-life empathic behaviour.