Abstract
We are able to understand other people’s actions, because observing their actions activates some of our own neurons in much the same way as when we execute those same actions. Motor resonance, a property of a subset of motor neurons to fire both during action execution and action observation, is believed to be the neurophysiological mechanism underlying action understanding. Many posit that sensorimotor resonance is a critical component of empathy, underlying empathy’s first fundamental process of understanding actions of others. Studies show evidence that motor resonance, as measured by suppression of the mu rhythm – an electrical frequency of the brain predominantly attributed to reflect motor system activity – correlates with trait empathy. However, the research is underpowered and filled with many discrepancies in findings and disagreements in methodology. With 250 participants constituting a high-powered study, I investigated the relationship between motor resonance and trait empathy, at the two spectrum ends of action understanding. Using electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings, I measured the mu suppression elicited by the most commonly used stimulus to measure motor resonance, observation of a hand-squeezing-a-ball video, and found that individual differences in mu suppression recorded during the motor perception task did not correlate with self-report trait empathy scores. I found no gender effects in the mu suppression that this commonly used stimulus elicited. My findings suggest trait empathy is not related to motor resonance elicited by hand motor action perception.