Mirror-touch synaesthesia: the role of shared ... - UCL Discovery

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Chapter 4
gustatory emotions (Jabbi et al., 2006). In a previous brain imaging study on mirror-
touch synaesthesia, the only brain region to differ between mirror-touch synaesthetes
and non-synaesthetes when observing touch to others was the anterior insula
(Blakemore et al., 2005). Shared representations within this brain region may be
important for this component of empathy.
Finally, analysis of correlations between personality and measures of empathy
provide important insights into the EQ and IRI measures. Evidence that heightened
extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness are related with higher responses
on all components of the EQ is consistent with findings implicating these personality
traits in social cognition more generally; extraversion has been suggested to be a
measure of social skills (John and Srivastava, 1999); agreeableness has been linked to
altruistic behaviour (Barrick and Mount, 1991); and conscientiousness correlates
negatively with psychoticism (Aluja, Garcia, and Garcia, 2002). Of note, is the lack
of association between emotional reactivity and neuroticism, but presence of a strong
positive correlation between the personal distress subscale of the IRI and neuroticism.
This is consistent with the notion that the neuroticism personality trait would indicate
self rather than other-oriented processes when correlated with empathy. Further to
this, the openness trait appears specifically related to one’s ability to match another’s
emotional state with one’s own (as indicated by the positive relationship between the
openness subscale and emotional reactivity subscale of the EQ; and between the
openness subscale and fantasizing subscale of the IRI) and this was the only
personality trait where synaesthetes significantly differed from controls. Notably, it is
difficult to determine the nature of the higher levels of openness to experience
observed in mirror-touch synaesthetes relative to controls because the mirror-touch
group included self-referred cases who have already demonstrated openness to