@article {Zhao2021.09.03.458875, author = {Yili Zhao and Lei Zhang and Markus R{\"u}tgen and Ronald Sladky and Claus Lamm}, title = {Effective connectivity reveals distinctive patterns in response to others{\textquoteright} genuine affective experience of disgust as compared to pain}, elocation-id = {2021.09.03.458875}, year = {2021}, doi = {10.1101/2021.09.03.458875}, publisher = {Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory}, abstract = {Empathy is significantly influenced by the identification of others{\textquoteright} emotions. In a recent study, we have found increased activation in the anterior insular cortex (aIns) that could be attributed to affect sharing rather than perceptual saliency, when seeing another person genuinely experiencing pain as opposed to merely acting to be in pain. This study further revealed effective connectivity between aIns and the right supramarginal gyrus (rSMG) to track what another person really feels. In the present study, we used a similar paradigm to investigate the corresponding neural signatures in the domain of empathy for disgust - with participants seeing others genuinely sniffing unpleasant odors as compared to pretending to smell something disgusting. Consistent with the previous findings on pain, we found stronger activations in aIns associated with affect sharing for genuine disgust compared with pretended disgust. However, instead of rSMG we found engagement of the olfactory cortex. Using dynamic causal modeling (DCM), we estimated the neural dynamics of aIns and the olfactory cortex between the genuine and pretended conditions. This revealed an increased excitatory modulatory effect for genuine disgust compared to pretended disgust. For genuine disgust only, brain-to-behavior regression analyses highlighted a link between the observed modulatory effect and the perspective-taking empathic trait. Altogether, the current findings complement and expand our previous work, by showing that perceptual saliency alone does not explain responses in the insular cortex. Moreover, it reveals that different brain networks are implicated in a modality-specific way when sharing the affective experiences associated with pain vs. disgust.Significant statement Others{\textquoteright} feelings influence our own feelings, no matter whether these feelings are genuine or merely pretended. In our previous study, we have shown the interaction of the region related to affect sharing and affective self-other distinction allowed us to track others{\textquoteright} genuine experiences of pain vs. pretended pain. Here, we adopted a similar paradigm but in the domain of empathy for disgust. Results indicate both similar and distinct brain networks that are engaged when sharing others{\textquoteright} affective experiences of pain and disgust. This suggests that we could clearly distinguish others{\textquoteright} feelings of genuinely aversive experiences as compared to pretended affects, while domain-specific neural underpinnings might play a role in response to different affective experiences related to pain vs. disgust.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.}, URL = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/09/06/2021.09.03.458875}, eprint = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/09/06/2021.09.03.458875.full.pdf}, journal = {bioRxiv} }