Differential pattern of functional brain plasticity after compassion and empathy training
Klimecki and colleagues trained one group in empathic resonance and then in compassion. While participants viewed videos of human suffering, empathy training increased negative feeling and activity in the anterior insula and anterior midcingulate cortex, regions linked to empathy for pain. Compassion training that followed reduced the negative feeling, increased positive feeling and activated a separate network including the ventral striatum, pregenual anterior cingulate cortex and medial orbitofrontal cortex. The authors suggest compassion training may be a way of coping with empathic distress.
Klimecki and colleagues trained one group in empathic resonance and then in compassion. While participants viewed videos of human suffering, empathy training increased negative feeling and activity in the anterior insula and anterior midcingulate cortex, regions linked to empathy for pain. Compassion training that followed reduced the negative feeling, increased positive feeling and activated a separate network including the ventral striatum, pregenual anterior cingulate cortex and medial orbitofrontal cortex. The authors suggest compassion training may be a way of coping with empathic distress.
Written from the abstract, Europe PMC record, 2026-11-03.
What our sources record
Recorded when this source was checked, figures included, with page references and quotation marks removed.
Klimecki, O. M., Leiberg, S., Ricard, M., & Singer, T. (2014). Differential pattern of functional brain plasticity after compassion and empathy training. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 9(6), 873-879. doi:10.1093/scan/nst060 https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nst060