What is Empathy?
The word empathy is a Greek-derived word, which means physical affection. Empathy is the ability to exactly get what the other person is feeling from their point of view; in simple terms, it is the ability to keep oneself in that individual’s position. Empathy involves a wide range of emotional states; emotional, cognitive, and somatic.
Brain activity can reveal a person’s capability to sense empathy
Scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, discovered that it is probable to evaluate an individual’s capacity to feel empathy by studying their brain activity when it is at rest rather than being engaged in certain activities. It is evaluated via psychological evaluations. This is also helpful for people who have autism or other mental illness who have intricacies in expressing their emotions.
Advantages of assessing empathy
Empathy is a keystone of health and happiness. Apart from helping in the assessment of empathy in people distress with anxiety or mental illness, it aids to foresee the inner feelings of others and develop social behavior via our concern for others.
Tools used for the collection of brain activity
Resting Brain activity was primarily composed employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which is a technique, used for measuring brain activity. Researchers sought to determine how precisely the brain scans could predict the participants’ empathic disposition. They employed Artificial intelligence that can collect exquisite patterns in data that is far difficult in conventional data analyses.
Conclusion
Studies reveal that brains at rest also functions in a way similar to a way brain engaged in tasks. The power of AI could help us foresee how a patient will counter to a particular intrusion providing optimal therapeutic approaches. Scientists also add that further studies may help us to go deep and analyze other spots of the brain associated with empathy.
