The power of pain: The temporal-spatial dynamics of empathy induced by body gestures and facial expressions

Two non-verbal pain representations, body gestures and facial expressions, can communicate pain to others and elicit our own empathic responses. However, the specific impact of these representations on neural responses of empathy, particularly in terms of temporal and spatial neural mechanisms, remains unclear. To address this issue, the present study developed a kinetic pain empathy paradigm comprising short animated videos depicting a protagonist's “real life” pain and no-pain experiences through body gestures and facial expressions. Electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings were conducted on 52 neurotypical adults; while they viewed the animations. Results from multivariate pattern, event-related potential, event-related spectrum perturbation, and source localization analyses revealed that pain expressed through facial expressions, but not body gestures, elicited increased N200 and P200 responses and activated various brain regions, i.e., the anterior cingulate cortex, insula, thalamus, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, temporal gyrus, cerebellum, and right supramarginal gyrus. Enhanced theta power with distinct spatial distributions were observed during early affective arousal and late cognitive reappraisal stages of the pain event. Multiple regression analyses showed a negative correlation between the N200 amplitude and pain catastrophizing, and a positive correlation between the P200 amplitude and autism traits. These findings demonstrate the temporal evolution of empathy evoked by dynamic pain display, highlighting the significant impact of facial expression and its association with individuals’ unique psychological traits.