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Multidisciplinarity and Interdisciplinarity in Health pp 143–176Cite as

Getting to Know Ourselves Through Recognizing Ourselves in Others: Neuroanatomy of Empathy in a Social Neuroscientific Model

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Part of the book series: Integrated Science ((IS,volume 6))

Summary

This chapter revisits the intricate notion of ‘human being’ elaborated by Duns Scotus to argue that empathy is a broad concept overlapping emotional, cognitive, and social components, allowing people to recognize another’s mental and physical states and to motivate prosocial behaviors. Also, an analytical review is offered and initiated with the German term einfühlung used in esthetics and phenomenology. It was then translated as empathy, with meanings used in the contemporary cognitive sciences and evolutionary perspectives. The analytical review guided a critical revision of neuroimaging studies to provide a neuroanatomical mapping of empathy useful for mental health issues and the analysis of social behaviors in response to others’ needs. The mapping involves overlapped neural functions related to emotional and motor experiences (insula and anterior cingulate cortex), emotional contagion and recognition (amygdala, inferior frontal gyrus, inferior parietal lobe, and premotor cortex), cognitive perspective-taking and mentalizing (medial and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, superior temporal sulcus, temporal pole, temporoparietal junction, and precuneus), inference of emotional states (ventromedial prefrontal cortex), and the distinction between the self and the other (dorsomedial and ventromedial regions of the prefrontal cortex and inferior parietal lobe). The neuroanatomical mapping is interpreted under the social neuroscience proposal, which examines neurobiological processes related to social interactions. The chapter concludes with a pictorial representation to illustrate and explain empathic processes expressed in the human social world. An interdisciplinary model to comprehend empathy through neurosciences, experimental biology, ethology, sociology, anthropology, history, philosophy, and psychology is finally depicted.

‘Empathic Being’

[Made by Roberto E. Mercadillo, 2019; Photography by Cinthia Montiel].

The code of this chapter is 01100101 01110010 01101101 01001101 01111001 01101111.

“Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are.”

José Saramago, Blindness

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Jessica González and Paulina Barrios from Acento Traducciones for revising the text, Cinthia Montiel for the art photography, and Salvador Nava for the design of Figs. 1–4.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Council for Science and Technology, Unidad Iztapalapa. San Rafael Atlixco No. 186, Col. Vicentina, Del. Iztapalapa, C.P. 09340, Ciudad de México, Mexico

    Roberto E. Mercadillo

  2. Area of Neurosciences, Department of Biology of Reproduction, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Iztapalapa Unit, Mexico City, Mexico

    Roberto E. Mercadillo

  3. Institute of Neurobiology, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico

    Daniel Atilano-Barbosa

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Correspondence to Roberto E. Mercadillo .

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    Nima Rezaei

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Mercadillo, R.E., Atilano-Barbosa, D. (2022). Getting to Know Ourselves Through Recognizing Ourselves in Others: Neuroanatomy of Empathy in a Social Neuroscientific Model. In: Rezaei, N. (eds) Multidisciplinarity and Interdisciplinarity in Health. Integrated Science, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96814-4_7

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