The neural pathways, development and functions of empathy Jean Decety Empathy reflects an innate ability to perceive and be sensitive to the emotional states of others coupled with a motivation to care for their wellbeing. It has evolved in the context of parental care for offspring as well as within kinship. Current work demonstrates that empathy is underpinned by circuits connecting the brainstem, amygdala, basal ganglia, anterior cingulate cortex, insula and orbitofrontal cortex, which are conserved across many species. Empirical studies document that empathetic reactions emerge early in life, and that they are not automatic. Rather they are heavily influenced and modulated by interpersonal and contextual factors, which impact behavior and cognitions. However, the mechanisms supporting empathy are also flexible and amenable to behavioral interventions that can promote caring beyond kin and kith. Addresses Child Neurosuite, Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, 5848 S. University Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637, United States Corresponding author: Decety, Jean (decety@uchicago.edu) Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences 2015, 3:1–6 This review comes from a themed issue on Social behavior 2015 Edited by Molly Crockett and Amy Cuddy http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2014.12.001 2352-1546/# 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. The scope of empathy Empathy is best considered in the context of emotional processing, which is an adaptive orienting system that evolved to guide behavior. Empathy is also an interper- sonal communication system that elicits response from others, helps to determine priorities within relationships, and holds people together in social groups. Recent research in behavioral, developmental, and social neuro- science has made progress in clarifying the nature of empathy and narrowing down its scope by delineating dissociable facets that are not totally overlapping in func- tions and mechanisms, but yet interact to support inter- personal relationships [1–3]. These facets include: firstly, affective sharing, which reflects the capacity to share or become affectively aroused by others’ emotional valence and relative intensity without confusion between self and other; secondly, empathic concern, which corresponds to the motivation to caring for another’s welfare; and thirdly, perspective taking (or cognitive empathy), the ability to consciously put oneself into the mind of another and understand what that person is thinking or feeling. Proximate mechanisms of empathy Each of these emotional, motivational, and cognitive facets of empathy relies on specific mechanisms, which reflect evolved abilities of humans and their ancestors to detect and respond to social signals necessary for surviv- ing, reproducing, and maintaining well-being. While it is important to consider the broad range of species-specific behaviors when understanding motivated behaviors, there is a clear evolutionary continuity in the proximate mechanisms underlying empathy across mammalian spe- cies. These include neural circuits connecting the brain- stem, amygdala, hypothalamus, basal ganglia, and orbitofrontal cortex that regulate approach motivation and avoidance motivation [4–6]. These pathways together with neuroendocrine mechanisms, and the behaviors they mediate are highly conserved across mammalian species, as exemplified by a growing body of work with rodents [7,8,9,10  ] (Figure 1). Numerous studies demonstrated that the brainstem, amygdala, insula and orbitofrontal cortex are activated by the perception of others’ emotional states, but the extent to which the pattern of brain activity in these regions can predict the type of emotion remains unclear [11]. In the same vein, despite the current enthusiasm for the idea that the experience of emotion and the percep- tion of emotion in others rely on the same neural sub- strates, meta-analyses of functional neuroimaging studies show a striking dissociation between the two [12]. An impressive body of work, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with both children and adults has reliably demonstrated that when individuals are exposed to facial expressions of pain, sadness, or emo- tional distress, brain regions involved in the first-hand experience of physical pain are activated [13]. These regions include the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), anterior insula (aINS), supplementary motor area (SMA), amygdala, somatosensory cortex, and periaque- ductal gray area (PAG). Given that regions involved in the first-hand experience of physical pain are also active when Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect www.sciencedirect.com Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences 2015, 3:1–6