The responses on the scans were similar to those found in studies of adults. Researchers found that children, like adults, show responses to pain in the same areas of their brains. The research also found additional aspects of the brain activated in children, when youngsters saw another person intentionally hurt by another individual.
"This study is the first to examine in young children both the neural response to pain in others and the impact of someone causing pain to someone else," said Jean Decety, Professor in the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Chicago, who reported the findings in the article, "Who Caused the Pain? An fMRI Investigation of Empathy and Intentionality in Children," published in the currrent issue of
Neuropsychologia. Joining him as co-authors were University students Kalina Michalska and Yuko Aktsuki.
The programming for empathy is something that is "hard-wired" into the brains of normal children, and not entirely the product of parental guidance or other nurturing, said Decety. Understanding the brain's role in responding to pain can help researchers understand how brain impairments influence anti-social behavior, such as bullying, he explained.
For their research, the team showed 17 typically developed children, ages seven to 12, animated photos of people experiencing pain, either received accidentally or inflicted intentionally. The group included nine girls and eight boys.
While undergoing fMRI scans, children where shown animations using three photographs of two people whose right hands or right feet only were visible.
The photographs showed people in pain accidently caused, such as when a heavy bowl was dropped on their hands, and situations in which the people were hurt, such as when a person stepped intentionally on someone's foot. They were also shown pictures without pain and animations in which people helped someone alleviate pain.
The scans showed that the parts of the brain activated when adults see pain were also triggered in children.
"Consistent with previous functional MRI studies of pain empathy with adults, the perception of other people in pain in children was associated with increased hemodymamic activity in the neural circuits involved in the processing of first-hand experience of pain, including the insula, somatosensory cortex, anterior midcigulate cortex, periaqueductal gray and supplementary motor area," Decety wrote.
However, when the children saw animations of someone intentionally hurt, the regions of the brain engaged in social interaction and moral reasoning (the temporo-parietal junction, the paracigulate, orital medial frontal cortices and amygdala) also were activated.
The study, which was supported by the National Science Foundation, provides new insights for children between childrens' perceptions of right and wrong and how their brains process information, Decety said. "Although our study did not tap into explicit moral judgment, perceiving an individual intentionally harming another person is likely to elicit the awareness of moral wrongdoing in the observer," he wrote.
Subsequent interviews with the children showed they were aware of wrong-doing in the animations in which someone was hurt. "Thirteen of the children thought that the situations were unfair, and they asked about the reason that could explain this behavior," Decety said.
Source: University of Chicago
Related stories:
China sets melamine levels for milk products
(AP) -- China on Wednesday introduced standards for levels of the industrial chemical melamine permitted in milk and food products as it seeks to rein in a festering safety scare.
Children's experts say doctors and parents can sort out symptoms with a checklist
A young child arrives at the emergency room after several days of abdominal pain, vomiting, and diarrhea and is sent home with a diagnosis of viral gastritis and treatment for the symptoms. The child seems better for a while, only to return to the ER with worse symptoms and a ruptured appendix, a life-threatening complication of appendicitis.
Major study of opiate use in children's hospitals provides simple steps to alleviate harm
Hospitalized kids with painful ailments from broken bones to cancer are often dosed with strong, painkilling drugs known as opiates. The medications block pain, but they can have nasty side effects. Constipation, for instance, is one side effect that can cause discomfort and even extend a child's hospital stay.
Doctors: No hamsters or exotic pets for young kids
(AP) -- Warning: young children should not keep hedgehogs as pets - or hamsters, baby chicks, lizards and turtles, for that matter - because of risks for disease.
Calming your thoughts through mindfulness
Our worries. They're crescendoing like the finale of Beethoven's "Ninth": Bailouts, buyouts. Recession, depression.
Acupressure calms children before surgery
An acupressure treatment applied to children undergoing anesthesia noticeably lowers their anxiety levels and makes the stress of surgery more calming for them and their families, UC Irvine anesthesiologists have learned.
No longer depressed, or on meds
Henry Quant was just 5 years old and bedridden with chronic fevers when he began taking pills for anxiety and depression. His mother knew that the drugs helped, but they made her nervous.
Out of Iraq emerges hope for those with the severest of head injuries
There may be more hope than has been recognized for some people with severe brain injuries, according to a U.S. neurosurgeon who earlier this year spent four months in Iraq treating soldiers and civilians. Jason Huang, M.D., this week presented his results from his experience in Iraq at the annual meeting of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons in Orlando, Fla.
