Neural Bases for Emotional Empathy
Emotional empathy is said to engage a bottom-up process of perception and action (Decety, 2011).
The structures of the brain believed to underlie emotional empathy are the superior temporal sulcus, amygdala, hypothalamus, orbitofrontal cortex, and hippocampus (Decety, 2011).
The implicated empathetic functions of these separate structures are believed to be:
• The superior temporal sulcus in the perception of facial expressions
(Engell & Haxby, 2007)
• The amygdala in the recognition of emotion
(Adolphs, Baron-Cohen, & Tranel, 2002);
• The hypothalamus in the expression of emotion (Zajonc, 1984);
• The orbitofrontal cortex in judging others' emotional states
(Farrow et al., 2001); and
• The hippocampus in the use of memories in making emotional judgments regarding others (Perry, Hendler, & Shamay-Tsoory, 2011).
Early empathy is seen in infants because these are among the brain structures that develop earliest (Light & Zahn-Waxler, 2012).
Furthermore, the neurochemical system that has been implicated in emotional empathy is the oxytocingeric system (Hurlemann et al., 2010). Oxytocin is produced in the hypothalamus and some oxytocin-producing neurons project to the amygdala and the orbitofrontal cortex (Light & Zahn-Waxler, 2012). Oxytocin facilitates maternal behaviour through release during gestation and lactation (Decety, 2011b).
