**3. Discussion and outlook**

Empathy is a universal emotion that has evolved to facilitate pro-social behavior and interpersonal interactions in humans. Empathy can be divided into emotional empathy and cognitive empathy. Emotional empathy refers to an individual's emotion infection and recognition of emotions, which emerges in infancy. The main subcortical brain areas involved are: the insula (Nsula), the anterior cingulate gyrus (ACC), and the mirror neurology (MNS). Cognitive empathy refers to an individual's understanding of the emotions of others and involves the main brain region: the ventral medial prefrontal lobe (vm PFC). The neural network of empathy develops over time with age and matures in early adulthood. The neural network of empathy is modulated by cognitive appraisal. Oxytocin enhances empathy. Oxytocin receptor gene polymorphisms are associated with empathy. Oxytocin may facilitate empathic responses by enhancing insula and subfrontal gyrus activation. Further research could be conducted in the future in the following areas:

#### **3.1 Conducting an intervention study of oxytocin to improve empathy-deficient individuals**

Hurlemann demonstrated that oxytocin primarily promotes affective empathy without affecting cognitive empathy. In contrast, Pedersen found that oxytocin improved the theory of mind levels (including cognitive empathy) in patients with schizophrenia, demonstrating that oxytocin can also promote cognitive empathy. The reasons for the inconsistency between these two findings have not yet been explored in relevant studies. Therefore, the different effects of oxytocin on emotional and cognitive empathy could be investigated in the future.

Oxytocin has been found to improve emotion recognition in adolescent males with autism [74] and to improve empathic accuracy in individuals with poor social competence [75]. The study of the ameliorative effects of oxytocin on empathy-deficient individuals (autism) has facilitated the development of interventions for empathydeficient individuals. Therefore, more research should be conducted in the future on the effects of oxytocin interventions on empathy-deficient individuals. In addition, most studies on the effects of oxytocin on empathy have used male subjects. In the future, the mechanism of oxytocin on empathy could be investigated using female subjects or a mixture of male and female subjects.
