“Our findings indicate that the brain’s defence system plays a greater role in helping behaviour than was previously thought. These results contradict the conventional wisdom that we need to suppress our own fear system in order to help others who are in danger”, says Andreas Olsson, professor at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet and the study's last author.
The capacity for empathy for the distress of others has long been considered the driving force of helping. But when we decide to help someone who is in danger, we have to consider not only the other person’s distress but the risk we pose to ourselves by helping – for example, by rushing into a burning building to save someone or helping someone who fell on a train track.
Measured brain activity
Studies in other animals suggest that the brain’s defence systems are important for helping others, but very little is known about these processes in humans. Researchers from Karolinska Institutet have now investigated this in more detail.
The study included 49 healthy volunteers who were asked to decide whether they wanted to help another, unknown person avoid the discomfort of a mild electric shock. But if they decided to help the person, there was a risk that they might receive a shock themselves. The unknown person was visible to the participant on a screen. During the task, the activity in the participants’ brains was imaged with an fMRI scanner.
The participants were also told how soon the shock would be delivered, so that the researchers could measure their reactions relative to the proximity of the threat.
An evolutionarily ancient region of the brain