New research has found that types of empathy can be predicted by looking at physical differences in the brain. This raises the fascinating possibility that some kinds of empathy might be able to be increased by training or that it might be possible for people to lose their empathy over time.
A team of scientists, from Monash University, found that people who have what’s termed “affective” empathy, where they have a strong emotional response to what someone might be feeling or thinking, have denser grey matter in a certain region of the brain compared with those who have “cognitive” empathy, or people who have a more logical response to another’s emotional state.
by Josh L Davis
