Topic: emotional contagion

Rodents can transfer pain or fear and develop empathy by emotional contagion. Empathy may affect behavior impacting the results of behavioral tests. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of empathy behavior on the results of the passive avoidance test in rats housed in different conditions. Passive avoidance test was performed on male adult Sprague-Dawley rats divided into three groups with different housing conditions to investigate the contribution of emotional contagion of empathy by odor and auditory senses. They were housed in the same room and in the same cage (group 1, n=10

Emotional contagion, the capacity to internally simulate another's emotional state, plays a crucial role in modulating prosocial behavior. This includes rescue behaviors, wherein individuals in a safe context intervene to release a trapped conspecific from an aversive context. However, little is known about how the perceived emotional arousal of the distressed individual influences the helper's behavior and the underlying neuronal mechanisms driving prosociability. This study explores the involvement of the dorsal hippocampus (dHPC), associated with contextual learning, in emotionally charged