1:30 – 3:30pm Session Three

Compassion Research in Neuroscience

Moderator: BRIAN KNUTSON, Ph.D., Psychology, Stanford University
RICHARD DAVIDSON, Ph.D., Psychology, University of Wisconsin
TANIA SINGER, Ph.D., Neuroscience, Zurich University
Discussants: BILL MOBLEY, M.D., Ph.D., Neurology, Stanford University

Neuroscientiifc Studies of Compassion and Related Positive Qualities

Richard J. Davidson, Ph.D.

University of Wisconsin, Madison.

This talk will provide an overview of our research program on the behavioral and neural
correlates of compassion. It will include studies with EEG, fMRI and autonomic measures
and will focus on studies with both long-term practitioners as well as studies with novices.
This research program is at the very early stages of development and raises many more
questions than it answers.

Questions:

1. What is the relation between the cultivation of compassion and self-related

processes? In particular, how is self-identification modulated by compassion
training and are some of the effects produced by compassion training
meditated by the impact on self-relevant processes?
2. What is the relation between self-compassion and pain? How does self-
compassion alter one’s relationship to pain and is pain a useful probe in the
study of compassion?
3. How does the cultivation of compassion increase the likelihood of acting in
the face of suffering and how best should this question be studied in the
laboratory?
4. What is the impact of a highly compassionate person on others? Is this
interpersonal context a viable one to bring into the laboratory?
5. What are the relations among the four immeasurables? Does cultivating one
strengthen each of the others? Is there a normative developmental
progression? What do the contemplative traditions say about this?

Empathy Related Concepts and Definitions of in Social Neuroscience and Empathic

Motivation.

Tania Singer, Ph.D.

University of Zurich, Switzerland.

With the emergence of social neuroscience, researchers have started to investigate the
underpinnings of our ability to share and understand feelings of others. In this talk I will
first propose a definition of the concepts ‘cognitive perspective taking’, ‘emotion contagion’,
‘empathy’ and ‘sympathy’ ‘empathic concern’ and ‘compassion’. Very broadly, all these
concepts denote an affective response to the directly perceived, imagined or inferred feeling
state of another being. More specifically, emotion contagion arises a person is affected by
another person’s affective state but is not even necessarily aware of it (e.g. contagious
yawning). Unlike emotional contagion, empathy involves a distinction between oneself and
others and an awareness that one is vicariously feeling with someone but that this is not ones
own emotion: “I share your pain but I know that it is not my own pain”. Sympathy differs
from empathy in that you feel for and not with someone, that is, that the emotion you feel is
different from what the other feels. Empathic concern or compassion usually refers to a
feeling (of warmth, love, concern) and a motivation to help the other. I will then summarize
how these concepts have been studied in social and affective neuroscience using imaging
techniques. Finally, I will discuss the difference between fairness- and compassion-based
motivation for cooperation, defection and punishment.