Cognitive Control

Empathy determines our emotional and social lives. Research has recognised the role of the right temporo-parietal junction (rTPJ) in social cognition, however there is less direct causal evidence for its involvement in empathic responses to pain, which is typically attributed to simulation mechanisms. Given the rTPJ's role in the false beliefs and contextual information during social scenarios, we hypothesized that empathic responses to another's pain depend on the rTPJ if participants are given information about people's intentions, engaging mentalizing mechanisms alongside simulative ones. Participants viewed videos of an actress freely showing or suppressing pain caused by an electric shock, while receiving 6Hz repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) over the rTPJ or sham vertex stimulation. Active rTMS had no significant effect on participants' ratings depending on the pain expression, although participants rated the actress' pain as lower during rTPJ perturbation. In contrast, rTMS accelerated response times of providing ratings during pain suppression. We also found that participants perceived the actress' pain more intense when they knew she would suppress vs. show it. These results suggest an involvement of the rTPJ in attributing pain to others and provide new insights into people's behavior in judging others' pain when it is concealed.