Empathy is a process that comprises affective sharing, imagining, and understanding the emotions and mental states of others. The brain structures involved in empathy for physical @entity158 (AI), and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). High empathy may lead @entity1 to undertake pro-social behavior. It is important to understand how this process can be changed, and what factors these empathic responses depend on. Physical attractiveness is a major social and evolutional cue, playing a role in the formation of interpersonal evaluation. The aim of the study was to determine how attractiveness affects the level of empathy both in relation to self-rated behavior and in terms of activation of specific empathy-related brain regions. Twenty-seven subjects (14 female and 13 male) were studied using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) method while they were watching short video scenes involving physically more and less attractive @entity1 and @entity1 who exhibited @entity158 responses. In the absence of behavioral effects in compassion ratings, we observed stronger activation in @entity75 (ACC; AI) for less attractive @entity1 and for attractive @entity1 than for attractive @entity1 . Evolutionary psychology studies suggest that beauty is valued more highly in females than males, which might lead observers to empathize more strongly with the attractive @entity1 than the @entity1 . Attractive mens' faces are typically associated with enhanced masculine facial characteristics and are considered to possess fewer desirable personality traits compared with feminized faces. This could explain why more empathy was shown to less attractive @entity1 . In conclusion, the study showed that the attractiveness and sex of a model are important modulators of empathy for @entity158 .

Physical attractiveness and sex as modulatory factors of empathic brain responses to XXXX .

@entity1 :: ('9606', 'Species') :: ['women', 'woman', 'people', 'men'] @entity75 :: ('MESH:D001927', 'Disease') :: ['empathic brain structures'] @entity158 :: ('MESH:D010146', 'Disease') :: ['pain', 'pain include the anterior insula']
@entity158 :: (MESH:D010146,Disease) :: ['pain']
