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Comment on Walter's ''Social Cognitive Neuroscience of Empathy: Concepts, Circuits, and Genes''
Arthur M. Jacobs
Emotion Review 2012 4: 20
DOI: 10.1177/1754073911421388
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421388

EMRXXX10.1177/1754073911421388JacobsEmotion Review

Comment

Comment on Walters Social Cognitive Neuroscience

of Empathy: Concepts, Circuits, and Genes

Emotion Review
Vol. 4, No. 1 (January 2012) 2021
The Author(s) 2012
ISSN 1754-0739
DOI: 10.1177/1754073911421388
er.sagepub.com

Arthur M. Jacobs

Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology, Freie Universitt Berlin, Germany

Abstract
In his review, Walter (2012) links conceptual perspectives on empathy
with crucial results of neurocognitive and genetic studies and presents a
descriptive neurocognitive model that identifies neuronal key structures
and links them with both cognitive and affective empathy via a high and
a low road. After discussion of this model, the remainder of this comment
deals more generally with the possibilities and limitations of current
neurocognitive models, considering ways to develop process models
allowing specific quantitative predictions.

Keywords
brain mappers, empathy, functional ontology, neurocognitive process
models

In his exemplary review, Walter (2012) links conceptual perspectives on one of the most investigated social constructs in
neuroscienceempathywith crucial results of neurocognitive and genetic studies. Walter discusses seven features likely
to help distinguish between affective empathy and related
phenomena such as cognitive empathy, emotional contagion, or
sympathy. According to this multiple-component approach,
affective empathy is composed of six essential features:
affective behavior, affective experience, affective isomorphy,
perspective taking, selfother distinction, and other orientation,
whereas the feature prosocial motivation is neither necessary,
nor sufficient for it. Affective empathy shares only three features
with cognitive empathy, but five with sympathy. Since Walters
proposal so far is purely qualitative, providing no feature
weights, it is hard to say whether this means that sympathy and
affective empathy necessarily overlap more than affective
empathy and cognitive empathy. Walter also points out that in
real life and phenomenal experience, cognitive and affective
empathy and sympathy might well co-occur most often.
He augments his view on empathy by a static, descriptive,
prequantitative model that identifies neuronal key structures
and links them with both cognitive and affective empathy via a

high (i.e., topdown) and a low (i.e., bottomup) road. The

high road to cognitive theory of mind (ToM) proceeds from
the stimulus (i.e., an affective state of other) to the so-called
ToM or mentalizing system (i.e., the temporo-parietal junction,
the superior temporal sulcus, the dorso-medial prefrontal
cortex, and the postero-medial cortex). The low road to affective empathy involves an affective-motivational nociceptive
network (i.e., the anterior insula and midcingulate cortex)
that is also hypothesized to support interoceptive awareness
and metarepresentations of emotionsand a complex formed
by the amygdala, the secondary somatosensory cortex, and the
inferior frontal gyrus which may be part of a human mirror
neuron system. Both networks are linked through the ventromedial prefrontal cortex which is supposed to support cognitive
empathy, that is, affective ToM. Although not explicitly integrated
into this model, Walter (2012) also hypothesizes that some
genes related to oxytocin and dopamine, and a gene of unknown
function related to schizophrenia, are part of the empathy picture. With this approach, based on both the results of metaanalytic studies and research from his own group, Walter
presents a theoretical framework, a kind of descriptive neurocognitive model that allows the generation of testable hypotheses and revised models of empathy.
In the following, I would like to comment more generally on
the possibilities and limitations of current neurocognitive
models, such as Walters (2012). In general, neurocognitive
models should help specify hypotheses on the role of brain
activity in the functioning of mental processes in a way allowing to test and falsify them by using neurocognitive methods,
such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), transcranial magnetic stimulation
(TMS), or functional near-infrared imaging (fNIRS). In practice,
this means that they must specify which neuronal responses are
triggered under which conditions by which stimulus context and
how those relate to subjective experience and objectively
observable behavior (Jacobs, 2008). Since neurocognitive
methods lead to a wealth of new dependent variables (DVs),

Corresponding author: Arthur M. Jacobs, Freie Universitt Berlin, Allgemeine und Neurokognitive Psychologie, Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion (D.I.N.E.),
Habelschwerdter Allee 45, 14195 Berlin, Germany. Email: ajacobs@zedat.fu-berlin.de

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Jacobs Comment on Walter 21

such as hemodynamic response functions, neurocognitive

models face the challenge to predict these new DVs both qualitatively and quantitatively within the context of psychological
experiments, together with the behavioral and subjective DVs.
A big challenge for the future, therefore, is to turn what seem
to be primarily descriptive models into process models, that
is, ones that not only specify essential components of a social
construct and hypothetical mental activity such as empathy
(Walter, 2012) or literary reading (Jacobs, 2011), but also
make explicit how these components interact with each other in
time to produce the subjectively reportable, and dynamic behavioral and neuronal, effects interpreted as markers of the mental
process in a given task environment.
Currently, a process model specifying the dynamic interactions between the component (sub)processes, neuronal circuits,
and genetic factors contributing to the social construct empathy
is not in sight, but Walter (2012) sketches a useful framework
for such a model. Further useful steps into this direction might
be made using the functional ontology approach (Lenartowicz,
Kalar, Congdon, & Poldrack, 2010; Price & Friston, 2005). Two
probabilities must be maximized in this approach which aims
at mapping mental functions to their neural substrates (or to
behavioral or genetic variables) and which requires a close
cooperation and cross-fertilization between brain mappers
and neurocognitive modelers, something which currently
seems to be more wishful thinking than fact (Jacobs & Carr,
1995; Jacobs & Rsler, 1999): (a) p(ACT/COG), that is, a
number specifying the selectivity of the brain area believed
to be the neural substrate of some cognitive process, and
(b) p(COG/TASK), that is, a number specifying the belief that
a given task really affords a certain cognitive process in
a maximally selective fashion (Poldrack, 2006). Whereas
the first number can be maximized by developing precise

(neuro)-cognitive process models, if possible in form of simulation models that fulfill a number of criteria for model development and evaluation (Jacobs & Grainger, 1994), the second
probability can be maximized by using technical tools such as
BrainMap (Lenartowicz et al., 2010). Perhaps future issues of
Emotion Review will see applications of this functional ontology
approach to Walters neurocognitive model of empathy.

References
Jacobs, A. M. (2008). Kognitive Modellierung und Simulation/diagram
making. In S. Gauggel & M. Herrmann (Eds.), Handbuch der
Neuro-und Biopsychologie (pp. 5460). Gttingen, Germany: Hogrefe.
Jacobs, A. M. (2011). Neurokognitive Poetik: Elemente eines neuro
kognitiven Modells des literarischen Lesens [Neurocognitive poetics:
Elements of a neurocognitive model of literary reading]. In R. Schrott &
A. Jacobs (Eds.), Gehirn und Gedicht: Wie wir unsere Wirklichkeiten
konstruieren (pp. 492524). Munich, Germany: Hanser.
Jacobs, A. M., & Carr, T. H. (1995). Mind mappers and cognitive model
ers: Toward cross-fertilization. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 18,
362363.
Jacobs, A. M., & Grainger, J. (1994). Models of visual word recognition:
Sampling the state of the art. Journal of Experimental Psychology:
Human Perception and Performance, 20, 13111334.
Jacobs, A. M., & Rsler, F. (1999). Dondersian dreams in brain-mappers
minds, or, still no cross-fertilization between mind mappers and
cognitive modelers. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22, 293295.
Lenartowicz, A., Kalar, D. J., Congdon, E., & Poldrack, R. A. (2010).
Towards an ontology of cognitive control. Topics in Cognitive Science,
2, 678692.
Poldrack, R. A. (2006). Can cognitive processes be inferred from
neuroimaging data? Trends in Cognitive Science, 10, 5963.
Price, C. J., & Friston, K. J. (2005). Functional ontologies for cognition:
The systematic denition of structure and function. Cognitive
Neuropsychology, 22, 262275.
Walter, H. (2012). Social cognitive neuroscience of empathy: Concepts,
circuits, and genes. Emotion Review, 917.

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