Topic: empathy

We provide protocols for the social transfer of pain and analgesia in mice. We describe the steps to induce pain or analgesia (pain relief) in bystander mice with a 1-h social interaction with a partner injected with CFA (complete Freund’s adjuvant) or CFA and morphine, respectively. We detail behavioral tests to assess pain or analgesia in the untreated bystander mice. This protocol has been validated in mice and rats and can be used for investigating mechanisms of empathy. Highlights • A protocol for the rapid social transfer of pain in rodents • Detailed requirements for handling and housin

Empathy is supposed to play a functional role in prosocial behavior. However, there has been behavioral evidence that people do not empathize everyone equally. I’ll present studies that show brain imaging evidence for racial ingroup bias in empathy for pain. These studies reveal multiple-level neural mechanisms underlying racial ingroup bias in empathy. I’ll also discuss potential intervention of racial ingroup bias in empathy and its social implications.

Empathy plays a critical role in social interactions, and many species, including rodents, display evolutionarily conserved behavioral antecedents of empathy. In both humans and rodents, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) encodes information about the affective state of others. However, little is known about which downstream targets of the ACC contribute to empathy behaviors. We optimized a protocol for the social transfer of pain behavior in mice and compared the ACC-dependent neural circuitry responsible for this behavior with the neural circuitry required for the social transfer of two rel