@phdthesis{Saulin2023,
  author    = {Saulin, Anne Christin},
  title     = {Sustainability of empathy as driver for prosocial behavior and social closeness: insights from computational modelling and functional magnetic resonance imaging},
  doi       = {10.25972/OPUS-30555},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-305550},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg},
  year      = {2023},
  abstract  = {Empathy, the act of sharing another person's affective state, is a ubiquitous driver for helping others and feeling close to them. These experiences are integral parts of human behavior and society. The studies presented in this dissertation aimed to investigate the sustainability and stability of social closeness and prosocial decision-making driven by empathy and other social motives. In this vein, four studies were conducted in which behavioral and neural indicators of empathy sustainability were identified using model-based functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Applying reinforcement learning, drift-diffusion modelling (DDM), and fMRI, the first two studies were designed to investigate the formation and sustainability of empathy-related social closeness (study 1) and examined how sustainably empathy led to prosocial behavior (study 2). Using DDM and fMRI, the last two studies investigated how empathy combined with reciprocity, the social norm to return a favor, on the one hand and empathy combined with the motive of outcome maximization on the other hand altered the behavioral and neural social decision process. The results showed that empathy-related social closeness and prosocial decision tendencies persisted even if empathy was rarely reinforced. The sustainability of these empathy effects was related to recalibration of the empathy-related social closeness learning signal (study 1) and the maintenance of a prosocial decision bias (study 2). The findings of study 3 showed that empathy boosted the processing of reciprocity-based social decisions, but not vice versa. Study 4 revealed that empathy-related decisions were modulated by the motive of outcome maximization, depending on individual differences in state empathy. Together, the studies strongly support the concept of empathy as a sustainable driver of social closeness and prosocial behavior.},
  subject      = {Einf{\"u}hlung <Motiv>},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{KleintWittchenLueken2015,
  author    = {Kleint, Nina I. and Wittchen, Hans-Ulrich and Lueken, Ulrike},
  title     = {Probing the interoceptive network by listening to heartbeats: an fMRI study},
  series = {PLoS ONE},
  volume    = {10},
  journal   = {PLoS ONE},
  number    = {7},
  doi       = {10.1371/journal.pone.0133164},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-148330},
  pages     = {e0133164},
  year      = {2015},
  abstract  = {Exposure to cues of homeostatic relevance (i.e. heartbeats) is supposed to increase the allocation of attentional resources towards the cue, due to its importance for self-regulatory, interoceptive processes. This functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study aimed at determining whether listening to heartbeats is accompanied by activation in brain areas associated with interoception, particularly the insular cortex. Brain activity was measured with fMRI during cue-exposure in 36 subjects while listening to heartbeats vs. sinus tones. Autonomic markers (skin conductance) and subjective measures of state and trait anxiety were assessed. Stimulation with heartbeat sounds triggered activation in brain areas commonly associated with the processing of interoceptive information, including bilateral insular cortices, the inferior frontal operculum, and the middle frontal gyrus. A psychophysiological interaction analysis indicated a functional connectivity between the middle frontal gyrus (seed region) and bilateral insular cortices, the left amygdala and the supplementary motor area. The magnitude of neural activation in the right anterior insular cortex was positively associated with autonomic arousal. The present findings indicate that listening to heartbeats induced activity in areas of the interoception network as well as changes in psychophysiological arousal and subjective emotional experience. As this approach constitutes a promising method for studying interoception in the fMRI environment, a clinical application in anxiety prone populations should be addressed by future studies.},
  language  = {en}
}