When losing hurt together: investigating the role of empathy during a card game by EEG hyperscanning

Social neuroscience research investigates the neural basis of social cognition, which encompasses various cognitive abilities involved in processing social information, such as empathy. Empathy is a key function driving human socialization and can be defined as the ability to perceive others' feelings. When studying the neural basis of this process, recent research has highlighted the limitations of the traditional approach, which focuses on the study of the brain activity of a single subject engaged in a social interaction. To gain a more comprehensive understanding of social behavior, neuroscience research has increasingly adopted the hyperscanning technique that allows the simultaneous recording of neural activity in two or more interacting individuals. By considering interacting participants as a unique system, hyperscanning provides a deeper insight into the dynamic and reciprocal nature of social interactions, offering a more accurate representation of social behavior, including empathy. In the present study, we investigated empathy (i.e., the emotional responses elicited by positive and negative events) modulated by familiarity (friends or strangers) in two participants engaged in a computer-based game, while EEG data were simultaneously collected in both participants. EEG-hyperscanning data were analyzed using spectral analysis in the source domain and the results showed that both participants exhibited overlapping activations in brain regions related to the processing of negative events (insula). In addition, the agent observing the game manifested activations in areas associated with social cognition and typically involved during the evaluation of emotional and psychological states of others such as the Medial Prefrontal Cortex and the temporal lobes.