Another fMRI study found that those high on the HSP scale were higher in empathy. Highly sensitive people had a greater reaction to photos of both happy and sad faces, compared with neutral faces, and to photos of a spouse’s happy or sad facial expressions, compared with strangers with the same expressions. Of special note: increased activation could be found not in brain regions associated with specific or pure emotion but rather in sensorimotor areas with mirror neurons, associated with empathy (for instance, the ventral medial prefrontal cortex and the precuneus).
Similarly, in several studies, highly sensitive adults exposed to video clips selected to induce positive, negative and mixed emotions reported stronger emotions and a broader range of emotions compared with those with lower sensitivity. What’s more, the highly sensitive had faster responses to emotional faces but not to neutral ones.
This makes sense in light of the most important aspect of sensory processing sensitivity, underlying all the others – depth of processing.
Elaine Aron, The highly sensitive person
