Adolescents with non-suicidal self-injury exhibit increased pain empathic neural reactivity and personal distress to physical but not affective pain
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Background
Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) in adolescents represents a critical public health issue. While symptomatic links between NSSI and alterations in pain and social processing have been established, changes in neural responses and everyday reactivity to others’ pain remain unknown.
Methods
This pre-registered study examined pain empathic processing in unmedicated adolescents with NSSI (n=29) and healthy controls (n=33) using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). A validated paradigm assessed neural responses to physical pain versus affective pain observation and was combined with both univariate and machine learning analytic approaches.
Results
NSSI participants exhibited significantly increased neural reactivity during physical pain empathy in lateral prefrontal, insular, temporal, and the somatomotor network regions (all p<0.05, FDR-corrected), while affective pain processing remained intact. Machine learning analysis revealed distinguishable whole-brain signatures, with a physical pain empathic pattern achieving superior discrimination in NSSI. NSSI participants reported elevated personal distress to others’ negative experiences in everyday life, which was associated with enhanced limbic reactivity during physical pain empathy.
Conclusions
Findings identify domain-specific neural hyperreactivity to others’ physical pain in NSSI adolescents and elevated personal distress in daily life. These characteristics may represent predisposing alterations that facilitate engagement in self-harm or consequences of repeated engagement in NSSI that impact everyday social behavior.
