I feel your pain: higher empathy is associated with higher posterior default mode network activity.

Empathy is characterized as the ability to share one's experience and is associated with altruism. Previous work using blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) functional MRI (fMRI) has found that empathy is associated with greater activation in brain mechanisms supporting mentalizing (temporoparietal junction), salience (anterior cingulate cortex; insula), and self-reference (medial prefrontal cortex; precuneus). However, BOLD fMRI has some limitations that may not reliably capture the tonic experience of empathy.

Traditional Risk Factors, Optimal Cardiovascular Health, and Elevated Lipoprotein(a).

Aims: To assess the association of traditional risk factor burden and Life's Simple 7 (LS7) score with incident atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) across Lp(a) levels.

Methods: There were 6,676 participants without clinical ASCVD from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis who underwent Lp(a) testing and were followed for incident ASCVD events (coronary heart disease and stroke). Low, intermediate, and elevated Lp(a) were defined as <30, 30-49, and >50 mg/dL, respectively.

Self-regulated analgesia in males but not females is mediated by endogenous opioids.

Converging lines of preclinical and clinical research indicate that females, in stark contrast to males, display an increased prevalence of chronic pain. Females also demonstrate weaker analgesic efficacy in response to opioid therapies when compared with males. These sex-specific differences may be driven by dimorphic endogenous opioidergic responses.

WITHDRAWN: I feel your pain: Higher empathy is associated with higher posterior default mode network activity.

The authors discovered an error in the primary analysis and have withdrawn the results from this version of the investigation.