Year: 2022
Type: review
Abstract: Empathy is critical to adjusting our behavior to the state of others. The past decade dramatically deepened our understanding of the biological origin of this capacity. We now understand that rodents robustly show emotional contagion for the distress of others via neural structures homologous to those involved in human empathy. Their propensity to approach others in distress strengthens this effect. Although rodents can also learn to favor behaviors that benefit others via structures overlapping with those of emotional contagion, they do so less reliably and more selectively. Together, this suggests evolution selected mechanisms for emotional contagion to prepare animals for dangers by using others as sentinels. Such shared emotions additionally can, under certain circumstances, promote prosocial behavior.
Source: Trends in Cognitive Sciences
Language: English
Topic: Primate Behavior and Ecology
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $6,700
Awards: Pioneering focused Ultrasounds as a new non-invasive deep brain stimulation for a causal investigation of empathy related brain processes in moral learning and decision making, From vicarious activations to neurons and social behaviour - a cross-species approach, G434337789, Functional connectomics of the amygdala in social interactions of different valence, Actively Frozen - contextual modulation of freezing and its neuronal basis
OpenAlex ID: W4281759205