Electroencephalograms and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging). Amygdala and insula activation occur when a person experiences emotions, such as fear and disgust respectively. Primary motor regions also activate during sympathy. This could be caused by humans' motor reactions to emotional faces (reflecting the expressions on their own faces) which seems to help people better understand the other person's emotion. Researchers also suggest that the neural mechanisms that are activated when personally experiencing emotions are also activated when viewing another person experiencing the same emotions (via mirror neurons). Pain seems to activate a region known as the cingulate cortex, in addition to . The temporal parietal junction, orbitofrontal cortex, and ventral striatum are also thought to play a role in the production of emotion. Generally, empathic emotions (including sympathy) require the activation of top-down and bottom-up activity. Top-down activity refers to cognitive processes that originate from the frontal lobe and require conscious thought whereas bottom-up activity begins from sensation of stimuli in the environment. From the sensory level, people sense and experience the emotional cues of another. At the same time, top-down responses make sense of the emotional inputs streaming in and apply motive and environmental influence analyses to better understand the situation. Top-down processes include attention to emotion and emotion regulation. Child development Sympathy is a stage in social and moral development. It generally arises when a child is between two and three years old, although some instances of empathic emotion can be seen as early as 18 months. Basic sharing of emotions, a precursor for sympathy, can be seen in infants. For example, babies will often begin to cry when they hear another baby crying nearby. This suggests the infant can recognize emotional cues in its environment, even if it cannot fully comprehend the emotion. Another milestone in child development is the ability to mimic facial expressions. Both of these processes act on sensory and perceptual pathways; executive functioning for empathic emotions does not begin during these early stages. Because of this, children and young adults experience another person's pain differently: Young children tend to be negatively aroused more often in comparison to the older subjects. Sympathy can elicit prosocial and altruistic behaviour. Altruistic behaviour happens when people who experience emotional reactions consistent with the state of another person feel "other-oriented" (inclined to help other people in need or distressed). People are more inclined to help those in need when