Figure 3. Neurosynth meta-analytic analyses for empathy-related seed regions, showing areas that exhibit significant co-activation with empathy-related seeds identified by our voxel-based quantification analysis.
Top panel, the area of the right IPL in which myelination markers (R1) covaried positively with Empathic Concern and negatively with Fantasy scores is part of a canonical default mode network including posterior cingulate and medial prefrontal cortex. Quantitative reverse inference revealed that this location was predictive of theory-of-mind related functional terms (see Table 3). Middle and bottom panel, MIC and SII seeds (whose microstructure related to affective and cognitive empathy, respectively) are part of an affective-salience network including dorsal-midcingulate, insula, amygdala, and primary somatosensory cortex. Interestingly, reverse inference revealed that the former was mostly predictive of affective salience (e.g., pain, disgust, intensity), whereas the latter was predictive of somatosensory touch. Images created by projecting Neurosynth meta-analytic z-values onto a smoothed, inflated cortical template using BrainNet Viewer; colorbar indicates z-value range which have been thresholded from 0 to 10 for visualization purposes. Coactivation map adjusted for multiple comparisons, pFDR < 0.01, see Methods for more details.