Summary: A new study shows that people rate empathic responses as more supportive and emotionally satisfying when they believe they come from a human—even if the same response is AI-generated.…
Tag: empathy
Brain Injury Could Explain Sudden Criminal Behavior
Summary: A new study has found that damage to a specific white matter pathway in the brain—the right uncinate fasciculus—may increase the likelihood of criminal or violent behavior following brain…
AI Generates Relatable Empathy Experiences
Summary: Researchers have developed an AI tool called EmoSync that boosts empathy by tailoring emotional analogies to each user’s personality and life experiences. Unlike traditional empathy tech that assumes uniform…
Robot Yawns Spark Contagious Yawning in Chimps
Summary: Chimpanzees have been observed yawning and lying down after seeing a humanoid android mimic a yawning facial expression, indicating contagious yawning triggered by an artificial agent. This study is…
Psychedelics May Shift Brain Power to the Right Hemisphere
Summary: A new theory suggests that psychedelics promote empathy, insight, and psychological flexibility by making the brain’s right hemisphere temporarily dominant over the left. Known as HEALS—Hemispheric Annealing and Lateralization…
Oxytocin Powers Altruistic Responses via Parallel Brain Circuits
Summary: A new study reveals that mice instinctively display rescue-like behaviors toward anesthetized peers, offering powerful evidence that prosociality may be hardwired in mammals. Researchers identified oxytocin as a key…
What the ‘moral distress’ of doctors tells us about eroding trust in health care
I sit on an ethics review committee at the Albany Med Health System in New York state, where doctors and nurses frequently bring us fraught questions. Consider a typical case:…
Empathy Loss in Dementia Linked to Brain Activity Changes
Summary: Frontotemporal dementia, affecting about 3% of dementia patients in Sweden, is characterized by a loss of empathy that challenges patients and their families. Using functional MRI, researchers found that…
How Alcohol Increases Pain Tolerance, and Aggression
Summary: Alcohol not only raises pain tolerance but also amplifies aggression, according to a new study. Researchers found that participants who drank alcohol had higher pain thresholds and were more…
