WORLD JOURNAL OF ADVANCE
HEALTHCARE RESEARCH

Leyla Sahin*, Oya Ogenler, Ozge Selin Cevik, Gulhan Orekici, Tolgay Ergenoglu

ABSTRACT

Aims: Nowadays neuronal mechanisms that underlie our emotional states, like anxiety or empathy has started to investigate by researchers. Anxiety consists of somatic, cognitive, behavioral components and adversely associated with self-efficacy and empathy. In this study, we consider how empathy acts when medicine students face to different conditions like death or malignant disease. Main Methods: To research empathic responses to the different stimulus, we used skin conductance level (SCL) in preclinical medical students. Researchers selected ten visual images about malignant diseases and death. Together with SCL, we also examined the effect of heart rate on empathy. In protocol, participants said their subjective ratings based on verbal expressions after the visual images. We analyzed the phasic SCL when subjects were seen visual images and verbal expressions. Key findings: According to our analysis, there are significant differences visual and verbal images phasic SCL differed from tonic SCL (p<0.05). We also found significant differences when images were grouped by age, like adult or child. Our participants phasic SCL were higher when images included adult individuals’ disease (p=0.030). Especially in woman subjects, phasic SCL are highest when images were verbal expressions. For hearth rate responses, there was significant difference between basal and other states (p=0.001). However, subject’s sex did not affect hearth responses (p>0.05). Conclusion: For empathy and anxiety research, SCL is a good indicator of individual emotional state, but hearth rate is still not obvious parameter for it. The present study shows us that importance of the age of target and participant’s sex differences.