Neuroscientific research on empathy has made much progress recently. How far can we get and how should we do it? Two different routes have been suggested by Dziobek and Jacobs in their commentaries. The first is becoming ecologically more valid by using real-life settings as stimuli. The second is becoming more quantitative by specifying a neurocognitive model, allowing more precise quantitative predictions. Although neither approaches are mutually exclusive, I suggest that these two routes are in a certain tension to each (...) other. I suggest an additional third, more indirect way, namely studying modulating factors of empathy like emotion regulation which have until now been largely neglected in empathy research. (shrink)