김상희 교수님의 새 연구 “Neurocognitive
mechanisms underlying improvement of prosocial responses by a novel implicit
compassion promotion task”가 'Neuroimaging'분야 IF
상위 10% 이내 저널(IF: 6.556, 14개 저널 중 1위)인 NeuroImage에 온라인 게재되었고, 고대소식/연구를 통해 조선펍, 스마트경제등 언론에 홍보되었습니다.
Title: Neurocognitive mechanisms
underlying improvement of prosocial responses by a novel implicit compassion
promotion task
Authors: Shin Ah Kim, Stephan Hamann, Sang
Hee Kim
Abstract:
Compassion is closely
associated with prosocial behavior. Although there is growing interest in
developing strategies that cultivate compassion, most available strategies rely
on effortful reflective processes. Furthermore, few studies have investigated
neurocognitive mechanisms underlying compassion-dependent improvement of
prosocial responses. We devised a novel implicit compassion promotion task that
operates based on association learning and examined its prosocial effects in
two independent experiments. In Experiment 1, healthy adults were assigned to
either the compassion or control group. For the intervention task, the
compassion group completed word fragments that were consistently related to
compassionate responses toward others; in contrast, the control group completed
word fragments related to emotionally neutral responses toward others.
Following the intervention task, we measured attentional biases to fearful,
sad, and happy faces. Prosocial responses were assessed using two measures of
helping: the pen-drop test and the helping intentions rating test. In
Experiment 2, independent groups of healthy adults completed the same
intervention tasks used in Experiment 1. Inside a functional MRI scanner,
participants rated empathic care and distress based on either distressful or
neutral video clips. Outside the scanner, we assessed the degree of helping
intentions toward the victims depicted in the distressful clips. The results of
Experiment 1 showed that the compassion promotion task reduced attentional
vigilance to fearful faces, which in turn mediated a compassion promotion
task-dependent increase in helping intentions. In Experiment 2, relative to the
control group, the compassion group showed reduced empathic distress and
increased activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex in response to others’
suffering. Furthermore, increased functional connectivity of the medial
orbitofrontal and inferior parietal cortex, predicted by reduced empathic
distress, explained the increase in helping intentions. These results suggest
the potential of implicit compassion promotion intervention to modulate
compassion-related and prosocial responses as well as highlight the brain
activation and connectivity related to these responses, contributing to our
understanding of the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying compassion-dependent
prosocial improvement.