Impaired empathy in patients with idiopathic generalized epilepsy : An event-related potentials study

Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved..

PURPOSE: Epilepsy is a common neurological disorder that may be complicated by neurobehavioral comorbidities. In a previous study, we identified impairment of empathy in patients with idiopathic generalized epilepsy (IGE). However, the temporal processing of empathy in patients with IGE is not well understood.

METHODS: We investigated empathy for pain and self-reported empathy in 21 patients with IGE and 22 healthy control subjects. All study participants were required to complete a pain empathy task involving images of individuals in pain and neutral conditions during recording of event-related potentials.

RESULTS: Compared with the controls, the patients with IGE showed impaired cognitive empathy but intact emotional empathy on the Chinese version of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index; they also had normal N1, N2, and late positive potential (LPP) but lower P3 amplitudes evoked by depictions of pain in others when compared with neutral images during the pain judgment task; the difference in the effects of pain empathy on the pain task between the IGE group and the control group was statistically significant.

CONCLUSION: These results indicate that later processing of pain empathy is impaired but early processing is intact in patients with IGE. The present study extends the findings of our previous behavioral study by providing solid evidence of impaired empathy in patients with IGE at the neural processing level.

Medienart:

E-Artikel

Erscheinungsjahr:

2020

Erschienen:

2020

Enthalten in:

Zur Gesamtaufnahme - volume:111

Enthalten in:

Epilepsy & behavior : E&B - 111(2020) vom: 01. Okt., Seite 107274

Sprache:

Englisch

Beteiligte Personen:

Jiang, YuBao [VerfasserIn]
Zhu, MingYu [VerfasserIn]
Yu, Fengqiong [VerfasserIn]
Wang, Kai [VerfasserIn]

Links:

Volltext

Themen:

Event-related potentials
Idiopathic generalized epilepsy
Impaired empathy
Journal Article
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Temporal processing

Anmerkungen:

Date Completed 17.03.2021

Date Revised 17.03.2021

published: Print-Electronic

Citation Status MEDLINE

doi:

10.1016/j.yebeh.2020.107274

funding:

Förderinstitution / Projekttitel:

PPN (Katalog-ID):

NLM312695969