Brain Structure Can Tell You How Empathetic You Are

by Monica Joshi

Getting emotional after watching The Fault in Our Stars, The Imitation Game or A Beautiful Mind might seem like the default response for most people. For some, however, they could simply compartmentalize the film and have a neutral reaction to it. The range of these responses, i.e. feeling too emotional, moderately emotional, or mildly emotional, might be a symptom of physical differences in the brain.

Researchers at Monash University found that there were physical differences in the brains of people who respond emotionally to others' feelings, compared to those who respond more rationally.

Led by Robert Eres from the University's School of Psychological Sciences, the study looked at whether people who have more brain cells in certain areas of the brain are better at expressing different types of empathy.

He prefaced the reasons for the study by saying that:

"Every day people use empathy with, and without, their knowledge to navigate the social world. We use it for communication, to build relationships, and consolidate our understanding of others."

The study, published in the journal NeuroImage, pinpointed the correlations between grey matter density and cognitive and affective empathy.

Mr. Eres said the study showed that:

"People who are high on affective empathy are often those who get quite fearful when watching a scary movie, or start crying during a sad scene. Those who have high cognitive empathy are those who are more rational, for example a clinical psychologist counselling a client.”

Using voxel-based morphometry (VBM), the researchers examined the extent to which grey matter density affected empathy. 176 participants were studied, while VBM predicted their scores on tests that rated their levels for cognitive empathy compared to affective, i.e. emotional, empathy.

The results showed that people with high scores on affective empathy had greater grey matter density in the insula. The insula is a region found right in the 'middle' of the brain, which is responsible for perception, motor control, self-awareness, cognitive functioning, and interpersonal experience. Those who scored higher on cognitive empathy had greater density in the midcingulate cortex -- an area above the corpus callosum that connects the two hemispheres of the brain. This part of the cortex is responsible for emotion formation and processing, learning, and memory.

Eres said in the study that:

"Taken together, these results provide validation for empathy being a multi-component construct, suggesting that affective and cognitive empathy are differentially represented in brain morphometry as well as providing convergent evidence for empathy being represented by different neural and structural correlates.”

However, the discovery also raises new questions -- like whether people could train themselves to be more empathetic, and would those areas of the brain become larger if they did; or whether we can lose our ability to empathize if we don't use it enough. The findings raise further questions about whether some kinds of empathy could be increased or even improved through training. It also brings up the possibility that perhaps people can lose their capacity for empathy if they don't use it enough; however, this needs to be explored and studied further.