Abstract:  Empathy refers to the ability to share and understand other people’s emotions and thoughts. Recently, the neural mechanisms underlying empathy have been attracting more and more attention in neuroscience research. However, most existing studies focus on affective empathy, cognitive empathy, and empathy for physical pain, leaving empathy for social experiences, positive empathy and counter-empathic responses relatively understudied. Moreover, because of differences in research paradigms and individual approaches, the results of these studies are controversial. Future research should focus on designing more ecologically valid research paradigms; further deepening and refining the study of the neural mechanisms of empathy; exploring the characteristics of people with different empathic abilities including underlying neural mechanisms; and exploring factors that moderate empathic responses.

Key words: affective empathy, cognitive empathy, empathy for pain, positive empathy, counter-empathic responses