UNCOVERING THE NEURAL CONVERGENCE BETWEEN EMPATHY AND INTEROCEPTION: EVIDENCE FROM A NEUROIMAGING META-ANALYSIS

Background: Functional neuroimaging studies consistently show co-activation of brain regions such as the anterior insula during tasks involving interoceptive and empathic processing. Growing evidence suggests a link between experiencing one’s own emotions and resonating with others’, positioning interoception as foundational to emotional experience and social behavior. This meta-analytic study investigates the neural convergence between empathy and interoception to delineate a brain network that integrates the two domains.
Methods: We conducted two separate systematic literature searches for functional neuroimaging studies related to empathy and interoception. Using seed-based d mapping, we performed voxel-wise random-effects meta-analyses for each domain to identify consistent patterns of brain activation. We also divided the two faculties into their respective subdomains (e.g., cardioception, observing emotions) and conducted analyses for each subgroup. We then applied a multimodal conjunction analysis to determine overlapping neural regions involved in both empathy and interoception.
Results: The conjunction analysis revealed three key clusters of overlapping activation. The largest cluster revealed the right insula extending to the inferior frontal gyrus. The second cluster was found in the left hemisphere involving the left insula. The third cluster encompassed the right supplementary motor area extending to the left supplementary motor area.
Conclusions: The observed neural overlap within the salience network and major motor regions suggests that empathy is rooted in embodied processes, highlighting the integration of bodily states as a foundation for social interaction. This study provides grounds to further examine the direct role of interoception in shaping bodily self-awareness and resonating with others' emotions.