"This study is the first to examine in young children both the neural response to pain in others and the impact of someone causing pain to someone else," Jean Decety said in a statement.

The programming for empathy is something that is "hard-wired" into the brains of normal children, and not entirely the product of parental guidance or other nurturing, Jean Decety said.

Decety and students Kalina Michalska and Yuko Aktsuki showed 17 typically developed children -- nine girls and eight boys -- animated photos of people experiencing pain, either received accidentally or inflicted intentionally.

"Consistent with previous functional MRI studies of pain empathy with adults, the perception of other people in pain in children was associated with increased hemodymamic activity in the neural circuits involved in the processing of first-hand experience of pain," Decety said.

However, the study, published in Neuropsychologia, also said that when the children saw animations of someone intentionally hurt, the regions of the brain engaged in social interaction and moral reasoning were also activated.