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Influence of empathetic pain processing on cognition in schizophrenia

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Abstract

Deficits in both empathy and cognition have been reported widely in patients with schizophrenia. However, little is known about how these deficits interact among such patients. In the present study, we used pain portraying pictures preceding a color-word Stroop task to investigate the effect of empathetic pain observation on cognition among patients with schizophrenia. Twenty patients with schizophrenia and twenty healthy controls were included. The control group showed increased Stroop facilitation and decreased interference during the empathetic pain condition compared with the non-empathetic condition. Although patients with schizophrenia exhibited deficits in cognition, they demonstrated a similar empathy effect to controls on Stroop facilitation, but a somewhat larger empathy effect on Stroop interference (a more decreased effect). In particular, the groups did not differ in either automatic or controlled processing during the non-empathetic condition, suggesting general rather than specific cognitive deficits in schizophrenia. Together, we interpret our findings in terms of two opposing effects of empathy on cognition in schizophrenia, with possible neuromodulatory mechanism. Whereas prior studies showed empathy to be impaired, our outcomes indicate that at least some components of empathetic pain processing are preserved in such patients.

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Notes

  1. As described, stimuli were taken from the first person perspective, so observers did not have to perform mental rotation before recognizing the content of images. This may lead to a perspective-taking concern—Would observers have the impression that they are the subject of pain? We used these stimuli in exactly the way Gu et al. [37, 38] and Jackson et al. [50] did. In their neuroimaging studies, they reported significant activation in both frontoinsular (FI) and anterior cingulate cortices. Activation levels of these regions correlated with subjective ratings of dispositional measures of empathy and unpleasantness of pain [50, 100]. Critically, it has been suggested that FI is the most important activation index for the empathy for pain [38]. In the present study, the independent pilot test and the post-experiment debriefing confirmed that observers experienced pain empathy—which was from the third person’s perspective. Nevertheless, researchers need to consider the first person perspective possibility in some cases (e.g., with special instruction), and the ability to adopt the other’s perspective in some special group (e.g., altruism).

  2. We also conducted data analyses including this participant and results were almost identical.

  3. The Stroop interference change was defined as the absolute values of the comparative index (see also Fig. 3 caption).

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Acknowledgments

This article (healthy control data) is based on part of data previously used in a report concerning theoretical model developing ([49]; in press). This research was partly supported financially by research project to Dr. Shuchang He (Natural Science Foundation of China, Grant No. 81271491/H0920). We would like to thank Dr. Noga Cohen for her critical reading of an earlier version of this manuscript, and Ms. Hui Li for her assistance with data collection from participants with schizophrenia. We are also grateful to all the participants for their contribution.

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All authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Human Neuroscience Institute, Department of Human Development, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA

    Kesong Hu

  2. Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA

    Marijn Lijffijt

  3. Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

    Theodore P. Beauchaine

  4. Department of Psychology, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Zhiwei Fan & Shuchang He

  5. Department of Clinical Psychology, Beijing Chao-Yang Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China

    Hui Shi

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Hu, K., Lijffijt, M., Beauchaine, T.P. et al. Influence of empathetic pain processing on cognition in schizophrenia. Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci 265, 623–631 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00406-014-0565-x

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