Fig. 2.

Brain regions associated with empathy. A) People instructed to look at interpersonal scenes and empathize with a specific person in an emotionally-charged vs. neutral situation showed greater activation in premotor cortex, thalamus, primary motor cortex, and primary somatosensory cortex. Participants simultaneously reported feeling similar emotions to the “other” person (Nummenmaa et al., 2008). B) Evidence for “group” emotions point to activation of the right posterior superior temporal sulcus and the left temporal pole, regions that are similarly activated when individuals feel pride in themselves (Takahashi et al., 2008). C) Other investigations into “group” feelings have shown that the striatum, substantia nigra, ventral tegmental area, insula, hippocampus, and amygdala have an increase in activation when sports fans watch emotionally-charged clips of their favorite teams (Duarte et al., 2017).