DORSAL COLUMN
Occasional Paper
Pictures of pain: their contribution to the
neuroscience of empathy
G. D. Schott
The study of empathy, a translation of the term Einfuhlung, originated in 19th century Germany in the sphere of aesthetics, and
Received September 18, 2014. Revised November 15, 2014. Accepted November 22, 2014. Advance Access publication January 22, 2015
The Author (2015). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain. All rights reserved.
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Pictures of pain BRAIN 2015: 138; 812820 | 813
Only fairly recently have investigations begun on the These authors also went further, claiming: . . . no esthetic
neural processes underlying empathy, and intriguingly the judgment is possible without a consideration of the role of
historical wheel has turned full circle, as it is the links be- mirroring mechanisms in the forms of simulated embodi-
tween empathy and aesthetics and art that have been of ment and empathetic engagement that follow upon visual
renewed interest. But now, however, the subject has at- observation, and no form of esthetic appreciation . . . can
tracted the attention of neuroscientists, notably following be fully envisaged without considering mirror systems and
Freedberg and Galleses paper in Trends in Cognitive their role in embodied and empathetic responses . . .
Sciences entitled Motion, Emotion and Empathy in (Gallese and Freedberg, 2007).
Esthetic Experience (Freedberg and Gallese, 2007). The Although these authors thus clearly envisaged a major role
present paper aims to explore a number of issues concern- for mirror neurons in the response to art, there had also been
ing the empathetic response to much of art; focuses par- another view that they briey acknowledged but argued
ticularly on pictures depicting pain; and takes into account against (Gallese, 2011). This view, which comprised a
both the nature of the images themselves and the contribu- fully cognitive and disembodied approach to esthetics, had
tions of art historians to the neuroscientic discussion. been held by several eminent 20th century art historians, not-
ably Ernst Gombrich and others in the eld such as R.G.
Collingwood, for whom Art came to be thought of as a
matter of pure cognition (Freedberg and Gallese, 2007),
Art and empathy: two and Nelson Goodman who, while acknowledging that he
might invite hot denunciation for cold over-intellectualiza-
Figure 4 Burning barbed wire. Photograph by Deborah gods chest being torn open by an eagles beak? Recalling
Padfield with Linda Sinfield from the series Perceptions of Pain the examples cited in the preceding paragraph, imagination
Deborah Padfield. Reproduced by kind permission of Deborah and appreciation of metaphor, but not memory, must be
Padfield and Dewi Lewis Publishing. implicated, and Scarrys account conrms these cognitive
processes are already well-developed in even young
children.
at least some of the differences may relate to whether the and inhibiting ones own perspective if necessary (Leiberg
response to these pictures engages with the affective or the and Anders, 2006)seem to be important particularly in
sensory components of the pain experience. Thus the af- complex or ambiguous situations, and probably engage the
fective component has been shown to be mediated by struc- temporoparietal regions, but particularly the prefrontal
tures which include the anterior insula, anterior cingulate cortex (Hynes et al., 2006; Leiberg and Anders, 2006).
cortex, brainstem and cerebellum when viewing actual Which networks are engaged may depend on the extent
painful stimulation (Singer et al., 2004), or pictures of affective versus sensory processing of pain, and it has
(Jackson et al., 2005) or video clips depicting pain been suggested that The key variable is likely to be the
(Morrison et al., 2004; Botvinick et al., 2005); the sensory mental attitude of the participants when thinking about
component is mediated by the sensorimotor structures of the pain of others (Singer and Frith, 2005).
the pain matrix (Avenanti et al., 2005), particularly the left
parietal lobe including the parietal operculum, the postcen-
tral gyrus and adjacent parts of the posterior parietal
cortex (Benuzzi et al., 2008); and when both affective
The parallel spectrum of
and sensory components of pain are engagedas in the creativity
unusual study of individuals themselves experiencing pain
Accepting there are numerous different neural networks
when observing images of another person in painthe an-
that respond to viewing works of art and which elicit
terior midcingulate cortex, anterior insula, prefrontal
empathy, so too there seem to be different processes under-
cortex and S1 and S2 regions are implicated (Osborn and
pinning the creation of art, although it is acknowledged
Derbyshire, 2010).
that creativity can hardly be reduced to the functional
Hardly surprisingly, and using somewhat different
properties of specic populations of neurons, mirror neu-
terminology, Leiberg and Anders (2006) concede:
rons included (Gallese, 2011). The inuential art historian
Disagreement subsists regarding the implementation of em-
Max Friedlander claimed that
pathy and whether it occurs in a contagion-like fashion or
depends on higher level cognitive processes. The former
A work of art comes into being in two ways either spontan-
the tendency to automatically mimic and synchronize facial eously, organic, or by deliberate effort . . . Strictly speaking, all
expressions, vocalizations, postures, and movements with art falls somewhere between these two extremes . . . The two
those of another person and, consequently, to converge ends of the scale are marked by the nave genius and the
emotionally (Hateld et al., 1994)would indeed be con- cold-blooded contriver (Friedlander, 1974).
sistent with involvement of the mirror neuron system. On
the other hand, the higher level cognitive processes that This suggests a certain parallelism: just as both mirror
include perspective-takingintegrating information from processes and those subserving cognition may be implicated
different sources when inferring the others mental state when viewing pictures depicting pain, so too there may be
Pictures of pain BRAIN 2015: 138; 812820 | 819
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