A BASE NEURAL DA EMPATIA: UMA REVISÃO INTEGRATIVA

• Autor(a) principal: Silveira, Barbara Marques
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional Universidade Franciscana
• Texto Completo: http://www.tede.universidadefranciscana.edu.br:8080/handle/UFN-BDTD/1058
• topic: Empatia; hormônio; neurotransmissor; ocitocina.; Empathy; hormone; neurotransmitter; oxytocin.; Ciências da Saúde e da Vida

The present work consists of, through an integrative review, understanding empathy and its neural mechanism in the face of human behavior. Objective: To synthesize and analyze the scientific production related to the neurobiological mechanisms of empathy in humans. Method: This is an integrative literature review, which consists of presenting a critical analysis of eligible studies in order to understand the physiological responses of empathy. The delimited research question was: What are the neural mechanisms of empathy and what is the behavioral component associated with it? To locate and select the studies, a search was performed for publications in the Lilacs, Pubmed and Web of Science databases. The inclusion criteria were: articles published between 2005 and August 2020, available in full. Literature reviews and animal studies were excluded. The descriptors used were “empathy”, “humanbehavior” and “hormonorneurotransmitter” in combination with the Boolean operator “and”. The search was performed using the inclusion criteria and the final sample consisted of 29 articles. Results: initially, 29 studies were found, however, among these, only 13 were in accordance with the eligibility criteria. The results discussed in the articles indicate that oxytocin levels increase in response to the induction of positive emotions. It is also extremely important to point out that the administration of intranasal oxytocin increases the levels of calm, decreases the level of anxiety and promotes trusting behaviors among people. Conclusion: Empathy is a significant construct, object of significant investigation, being recognized as a biological mechanism, which supports the evidence in the face of the action of organic substances that mediate empathic behavioral processes. Studies reveal that there is no single mechanism associated with empathic behavior, making it therefore difficult to establish the effects of oxytocin, testosterone or other endogenous modulators on the construct. The oxytocin circuit is still not clearly adjusted and defined, which may have other influences on behavior, not identified until the present study.