The vocal side of empathy: neural correlates of pain perception in spoken complaints

In the extensive neuroimaging literature on empathy for pain, few studies have investigated how this phenomenon may relate to everyday social situations such as spoken interactions. The present study used fMRI to assess how complaints, as vocal expressions of pain, are empathically processed by listeners and how these empathic responses may vary based on speakers’ vocal expression and cultural identity. Twenty-four French participants listened to short utterances describing a painful event, that were either produced in a neutral-sounding or complaining voice by both ingroup (French) and outgroup (French-Canadian) speakers. Results suggest that the perception of suffering from a complaining voice increased activity in the Emotional Voice Areas (EVAs), composed of voice-sensitive temporal regions interacting with prefrontal cortices and the amygdala. The Salience and Theory of Mind networks, associated with affective and cognitive aspects of empathy, also showed prosody-related activity and specifically correlated with behavioral evaluations of suffering by listeners. Complaints produced by in- vs. outgroup speakers elicited sensorimotor and default-mode activity, respectively, suggesting accent-based changes in empathic perspective. These results, while reaffirming the role of key networks in tasks involving empathy, highlight the importance of vocal expression information and social categorization processes when perceiving another’s suffering during social interactions.