The role of the inferior frontal gyrus in vicarious social touch: A transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) study

Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience
Leehe Peled-AvronS G Shamay-Tsoory

Abstract

The neural mechanisms facilitating the experience of vicarious social touch are largely unknown. The right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG) has been suggested as part of a simulation observation-execution neural network that plays a key role in the perception of tactile stimuli. Considering that vicarious social touch involves vicarious sharing of emotions, we hypothesized that emotional empathy, i.e., the ability to feel what another individual is feeling, modulates the neural responses to vicarious touch. To examine the role of the rIFG in vicarious touch and its modulation by levels of emotional empathy, we used anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on forty participants who observed photos depicting social touch, nonsocial touch or no touch during tDCS or sham stimulation. The results show that while participants with high levels of emotional empathy exhibited no change in ratings of vicarious social touch, participants with low levels of emotional empathy rate human touch as more emotional following anodal stimulation of the rIFG than following sham stimulation. These findings indicate that emotional responses to vicarious social touch are associated with rIFG activity and are modulated by levels of emotional ...Continue Reading

Citations

Aug 7, 2020·Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience·Giulia GalliMaria Concetta Pellicciari
Sep 7, 2019·Scientific Reports·Oksana Zinchenko
Mar 7, 2019·Frontiers in Psychology·Anke Ninija KarabanovHartwig Roman Siebner
Mar 24, 2021·Current Opinion in Neurobiology·Enrica ParadisoChristian Keysers
Jul 22, 2021·Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience·A K MartinM Meinzer
Dec 16, 2021·Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience·Nira SaportaSimone G Shamay-Tsoory

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