Collaborative Research

Janelle Beadle

Project: Measuring empathy biomarkers in persons with dementia and their caregivers: Identifying psychological, hormonal, and neural correlates of empathy, burden, and stress

Collaborating Institution: University of Nebraska Omaha

Team: Brent Mausbach (UCSD), Daniel Murman, M.D.; David E. Warren, Ph.D

Project Description: Caregivers to persons with dementia (PWD) are at risk for chronic stress, depression, and cardiovascular disease. They also may experience changes in empathy which could negatively affect their physical and emotional health. In Aim 1, we will investigate the degree to which empathy in PWD and their caregivers is related to caregiver stress and burden and patient life satisfaction. Aim 2 will examine the relationship between empathy and endocrine measures in PWD and their caregivers. Finally, Aim 3 will characterize individual differences in intrinsic brain networks associated with empathy, stress, and burden in PWD and their caregivers.

Judson Brewer

Project: Helping Physicians Help People: Developing, Testing and Disseminating Pragmatic Evidence-Based Trainings to Reduce Burnout

Collaborating Institution: Brown University

Team: Evonne Kaplan-Liss (UCSD), Lia Antico, Ph.D., Kate Crocker

Project Description: Physician burnout is at crisis levels, with over half of doctors experiencing anxiety, exhaustion, and empathy fatigue. This project, led by researchers at Brown and UC San Diego, tests a brief, app-based training that helps physicians recognize and break burnout-related habits using mindfulness tools. A pilot study showed reduced anxiety and burnout and increased self-compassion after just seven 15-minute sessions. The project also explores the impact of live virtual training and peer support to sustain these benefits. By combining scalable digital tools with community-based learning, this initiative aims to support physician well-being and improve patient care.

Kuo-Fen Lee

Project: Neural circuits and mechanisms of compassion- and empathy-like behaviors in the marmoset

Collaborating Institution: Salk University

Team: Cory Miller (UCSD)

Findings: There have been two key findings in our food sharing experiment. First, consistent with previous studies, we have observed that marmosets readily engage in multiple forms of food sharing in our paradigm. We have observed allofeeding as well as deliberate sharing of food in these monkeys. Second, the size of the food does not affect the animals propensity to share food. In other words, marmosets are just as likely to share small pieces of food as larger ones. The next conditions will serve to better understand the nature of marmoset food sharing and serve as a crucial foundation for subsequent neurophysiology experiments. 

Akila Kadambi

Project: Functional and neural systems level mechanisms of affective and cognitive empathy in relation to the self and others

Collaborating Institution: University of California, Los Angeles

Team: Piotr Winkielman (UCSD), Mike McCullough (UCSD), Marco Iacoboni

Elizabeth Murphy

Project: The impact of compassionate care for adults with Down syndrome in long-term residence: a study of health outcomes and quality of life in residents and their caregivers.

Collaborating Institution: CEI BTI Research Consultancy, Noah Homes Memory Care

Team: Darla Calvet (UCSD), Kim Keane

Findings: The data suggests that creating a community defined by compassion-centric care provides direct benefit to residents, their family members, and staff. Utilizing training and professional development to foster compassion in staff appears to be directly correlated with higher quality of care of residents and longer job satisfaction and retention among staff.

Jennifer Mascaro

Project: The neural and linguistic mediators of Compassion-Centered Spiritual Health at the hospital bedside

Team: Cassandra Vieten, Ph.D. (UCSD), Jeremy Smith, MSDS, Ph.D., Allison Kestenbaum, BCCi, ACPE, Stephen Lewis, Stephen Cole, PhD

Collaborating Institution: Emory University

Project Description: Although compassionate care is associated with improved patient outcomes, the implementation of a compassionate, patient-centered model of care is impeded by pressures endemic to most U.S. healthcare systems. In this context, hospital chaplains play a vital role in delivering emotional and spiritual care to a broad range of religious and non-religious patients. Here, we will evaluate Compassion-Centered Spiritual Health (CCSH™), a novel program delivered by chaplains designed to bolster the well-being, resilience, and compassion of healthcare patients and staff. We will test the scientific premise that CCSH confers a benefit to patients via augmented chaplain brain function and compassionate language.

Barbara Mandel

Project: Evaluating the impact of the San Diego county Alzheimer’s project on family members and primary care clinicians

Team: Gene Kallenberg (UCSD), Barbara Mandel, Dan Sewell, M.D., Michael Lobatz, M.D.

Collaborating Institution: San Diego County Medical Society Foundation

Project Description: The Specific Aims of the research project are to: Assess the impact of the Alzheimer’s Clinical Guidelines and resources created by San Diego County Alzheimer’s Project (SDCAP) on family caregiver wellbeing and on the confidence of licensed primary care providers (LPCPs) to provide optimal care to patients living with dementia and their family caregivers; and to demonstrate the feasibility of a large scale study assessing the adoption, implementation, and impact of the clinical guidelines and other resources developed by the SDCAP.

Andrea Chiba

Project: Cognitive empathy in rats

Team: Peggy Mason

Collaborating Institution: University of Chicago

Findings: Animals engage in prosocial behaviors that are reinforcing to the extent that they habitually repeat those prosocial behaviors. Experiments systematically examined the reinforcing qualities of viewing a prosocial act as compared to taking prosocial actions; the results show that agency is critical to the reinforcement of pro-social behavior. 

Tim Brown

Project: Developmental origins of empathy and compassion: Using social musical engagement to promote empathy and prosocial behaviors in early childhood

Team: John Iversen, Sarah Dowling, Margie Orem, MA, Naomi Lin, Alison Wishard-Guerra

Collaborating Institution: Visa Unified School District

Project Description: In this study, we will characterize individual differences and developmental trajectories in early childhood on measures of developing cognitive and affective aspects of empathy and prosocial acting, as collected in school classrooms, and relate these measures to performance on standardized and experimental measures of neuropsychological functioning, academic achievement, grades and teacher evaluations, and sociodemographic factors (e.g., linguistic status, socioeconomic status). We will also characterize associations between childhood empathy and developing musical abilities and test whether an in-classroom music program using social engagement and synchronization (e.g., rhythmic, melodic) significantly impacts children’s empathy measures relative to their baseline slope and relative to children who do not participate in the program.

Findings: Child direct performance scores on the new InSync Puppet Task were significantly positively correlated with both teachers' and parents' subjective ratings of each child's empathic abilities, showing good construct validity for the new measures. InSync empathy scores were not correlated significantly with standardized measures of other traditional cognitive and academic skills, such as literacy and numeracy. InSync empathy scores were not significantly correlated with children's performance on a measure of vocal singing (i.e., pitch matching) ability as predicted, but was close to statistical significance (p<0.09). There were no significant differences in children's InSync empathy scores across different levels of maternal education or household income, unlike scores on academic measures such as literacy and numeracy, which showed highly significant differences in the expected directions.

Gentry Patrick

Project: A Values Affirmation Intervention for Minoritized Students in STEM

Team: Janine M. Dutcher, J. David Creswell, Leigh Eck

Collaborating Institution: Carnegie Mellon University

Project Description: This study will investigate the impact of a simple self-affirmation intervention on the wellbeing, persistence, and academic performance of minoritized incoming freshmen students in the STEM and healthcare education pipeline. Self-affirmation has been shown to improve academic performance among women in STEM, African Americans, and others, by helping to buffer stressors that these students face, including negative stereotypes and lack of belonging. This study aims to implement a self-affirmation behavioral intervention, specifically for students in the STEM and healthcare education pipeline, and through the use of fMRI, to examine the neurocorrelates of self-affirmation.

Findings: The purpose of this study was to investigate the psychosocial health (i.e., stress, depression, anxiety, resilience, belonging, loneliness, and positivity resonance) of undergraduate minoritized students in STEM at UC San Diego randomized into one of three conditions: (1) acts of kindness (other-oriented); (2) self-affirmation (self-oriented); and (3) journalling (control). Results revealed that there was a statistically significant main effect of time on stress, belonging, loneliness, and positivity resonance. Specifically, belonging and positivity resonance increased over time across all three conditions, while loneliness and stress decreased over time. There were no significant differences between conditions and no time x condition interaction effects.