Neuroanatomical basis of concern-based altruism in virtual environment
Authors:Patil, I., Zanon, M., Novembre, G., Zangrando, N., Chittaro, L., Silani, G.
Published in:Neuropsychologia, 116, July 2018, pp. 34-43.
Abstract:Costly altruism entails helping others at a cost to the self and prior work shows that empathic
concern (EC) for the well-being of distressed and vulnerable individuals is one of the primary
motivators of such behavior. However, extant work has investigated costly altruism with
paradigms that did not feature self-relevant and severe costs for the altruist and have solely
focused on neurofunctional, and not neuroanatomical, correlates. In the current study, we
used a contextually-rich virtual reality environment to study costly altruism and found that
individuals who risked their own lives in the virtual world to try to save someone in danger
had enlarged right anterior insula and exhibited greater empathic concern than those who did
not. These findings add to the growing literature showing the role of caring motivation in
promoting altruism and prosociality and its neural correlates in the right anterior insula.
