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Empathy can be detected in people whose brains are at rest:
UCLA researchers have found that it is possible to assess a person's ability to feel empathy by studying their brain activity while they are resting rather than while they are engaged in specific tasks.
Traditionally, empathy is assessed through the use of questionnaires and psychological assessments. The findings of this study offer an alternative to people who may have difficulty filling out questionnaires, such as people with severe mental illness or autism, said senior author Dr. Marco Iacoboni, professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
"Assessing empathy is often the hardest in the populations that need it most," Iacoboni said. "Empathy is a cornerstone of mental health and well-being. It promotes social and cooperative behavior through our concern for others. It also helps us to infer and predict the internal feelings, behavior and intentions of others."
Iacoboni has long studied empathy in humans. His previous studies have involved testing empathy in people presented with moral dilemmas or watching someone in pain.
For the current study, published in Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, researchers recruited 58 male and female participants ages 18 to 35.
Resting brain activity data were collected using functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, a noninvasive technique for measuring and mapping brain activity through small changes in blood flow. Participants were told to let their minds wander while keeping their eyes still, by looking at a fixation cross on a black screen.
Afterward, the participants completed questionnaires designed to measure empathy. They rated how statements such as "I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me" and "I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective" described them on a five-point scale from "not well" to "very well."
Researchers wanted to measure how accurately they could predict the participants' empathic disposition, characterized as the willingness and ability to understand another's situation, by analyzing the brain scans.
The predictions were made by looking into resting activity in specific brain networks that earlier studies demonstrated are important for empathy. Researchers used a form of artificial intelligence called machine learning, which can pick up subtle patterns in data that more traditional data analyses might not.
"We found that even when not engaged directly in a task that involves empathy, brain activity within these networks can reveal people's empathic disposition," Iacoboni said. "The beauty of the study is that the MRIs helped us predict the results of each participant's questionnaire."
The findings could help health care professionals better assess empathy in people with autism or schizophrenia, who may have difficulties filling out questionnaires or expressing emotion.
Leonardo Christov-Moore, Nicco Reggente, Pamela K. Douglas, Jamie D. Feusner, Marco Iacoboni. Predicting Empathy From Resting State Brain Connectivity: A Multivariate Approach. Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 2020; 14 DOI: 10.3389/fnint.2020.00003
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2020, @02:37PM (6 children)
Seemed like TMB was referring to the aversion therapy of Alex in "A Clockwork Orange", but I didn't think there was a sequel for that Kubrick flick...
Kneejerk response == google,
sequel to "a clockwork orange"
which gave me an almost completely orthogonal first hit,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakfast_at_Tiffany%27s_(novella) [wikipedia.org]
This looks like a good Truman Capote story, but it was written before Anthony Burgess wrote Clockwork and over a decade before the movie. And searching inside the wiki entry there are no instances of "clockwork" or "orange".
*** So, after that little detour, just what are you referring to?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday February 26 2020, @03:11PM (5 children)
Voight-Kampff was a Bladerunner reference, so I took Buzzard's response to mean the sequel to that film. "A Clockwork Orange" focused on aversion therapy more than forcing Alex to watch a sequel to a movie.
BTW, for those who enjoyed "A Clockwork Orange" the German punk band Die Toten Hosen's Ein Kleines Bisschen Horrorschau concept album is a marvelous musical interpretation of the story. Hier Kommt Alex [youtube.com] is the best known song, but Keine Ahnung [youtube.com] and Zahltag [youtube.com] are excellent tunes also. The whole album is worth checking out.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday February 26 2020, @08:50PM (4 children)
Indeed. Bladerunner 2049 was as big a slap in the face as Highlander 2.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2020, @11:58PM (3 children)
Shows what taste you have. 2049 was no where close to the first, as with just about all such sequels, but it was still quite a good movie. People complained about the lack of color, but that seemed quite intentional to portray the decline of society in that dystopian post-war future. I'm glad they didn't try and simply recreate the 1st movie.
I can't think of any PC tropes that you chuds complain about these days, makes me wonder what your big gripes were.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 27 2020, @11:26AM (2 children)
You really don't get it, do you? Are you honestly so young that you haven't lived in a time before everything was a sequel or a reboot? Sequels and reboots aren't art, they're cash grabs.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2020, @01:18AM (1 child)
Reboots are cash grabs, sequels not necessarily.
2049 had new plot lines and twists, pretty minimal nostalgia aspects, and was a good movie. You're just bitter and I guess you don't want to share why.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday March 02 2020, @04:38AM
Because the story was poor and also poorly told. It was written for idiots who had a hard time following the original movie. I don't watch something with Bladerunner in the title because I want my hand held and everything that a moron in a hurry might miss being explained to me. Those sort of movies have their place but it sure as shit isn't in a Bladerunner sequel.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.