title: Neuroanatomical basis of concern-based altruism in virtual environment.
abstract: Costly altruism entails helping others at a cost to the self and prior work shows that empathic concern (EC) for the well-being of distressed and vulnerable individuals is one of the primary motivators of such behavior. However, extant work has investigated costly altruism with paradigms that did not feature self-relevant and severe costs for the altruist and have solely focused on neurofunctional, and not neuroanatomical, correlates. In the current study, we used a contextually-rich virtual reality environment to study costly altruism and found that individuals who risked their own lives in the virtual world to try to save someone in danger had enlarged right anterior insula and exhibited greater empathic concern than those who did not. These findings add to the growing literature showing the role of caring motivation in promoting altruism and prosociality and its neural correlates in the right anterior insula.
authors.affiliation: Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati, Neuroscience Sector, Trieste, Italy; Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA. Electronic address: patilindrajeet.science@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Indrajeet
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Patil
authors.affiliation: Centre for Studies and Research in Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Bologna, Italy.
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zanon
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Center for Social and Affective Neuroscience (CSAN), Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden.
authors.forename: Giovanni
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Novembre
authors.affiliation: Human-Computer Interaction Lab, Department of Mathematics, Computer Science, and Physics, University of Udine, Udine, Italy.
authors.forename: Nicola
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Zangrando
authors.affiliation: Human-Computer Interaction Lab, Department of Mathematics, Computer Science, and Physics, University of Udine, Udine, Italy.
authors.forename: Luca
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Chittaro
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Psychology: Health, Development, Enhancement and Intervention, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Giorgia
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Silani
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000533:Altruism; D001921:Brain / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004645:Empathy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D000076142:Virtual Reality; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Altruism; Empathic concern; Empathy; Moral; Morphometry; Prosocial