Increased Similarity of Neural Responses to Experienced and Empathic Distress in Costly Altruism

O'Connell, K., Brethel-Haurwitz, K.M., Rhoads, S.A., Cardinale, E.M., Vekaria, K.M., Robertson, E.L., Walitt, B., VanMeter, J.W., & Marsh, A.A.

Machine learning classifiers reveal that altruistic kidney donors show more similar multi-voxel neural patterns between first-hand and observed distress, providing evidence that empathic neural simulation underlies costly real-world altruism.