Empathic Fear Responses in Mice Are Triggered by Recognition of a Shared Experience
Open accessAbstract
Empathy is an important psychological capacity that involves the ability to recognize and share emotions with others. In humans, empathy for others is facilitated by having had a similar prior experience. It increases with the intensity of distress that observers believe is occurring to others, and is associated with acute emotional responses to witnessing others' distress. We sought to develop a relatively simple and fast mouse model of human empathy that resembled these characteristics. We modeled empathy by measuring the freezing of observer mice to observing the footshock of a subject mouse. Observer mice froze to subject footshocks only when they had a similar shock experience 24 hours earlier. Moreover, this freezing increased with the number of footshocks given to the subject and it was accentuated within seconds after footshock delivery. Freezing was not seen in naïve observers or in experienced observers that observed a subject who was spared footshock. Observers did not freeze to a subject's footshock when they had experienced a swim stress 24 hours prior, demonstrating a specific effect for shared experience, as opposed to a generalized stressor in eliciting observer mouse freezing. We propose that this two-day experimental protocol resembles many aspects of human empathy in a mouse model that is amenable to transgenic analysis of neural substrates for empathy and its impairment in certain clinical disorders.
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No statistical methods were used to predetermine sample sizes.
“No statistical methods were used to predetermine sample sizes, although sample sizes were consistent with those from previous studies of this kind7,9,29.”
From Oxytocin enhances observational fear in mice (2017) · cites this paper as [9]
Observer mice did not have experience with foot-shock prior to demonstrator conditioning.
“Observer mice did not have experience with foot-shock (i.e., “priming”) prior to demonstrator conditioning (cf. 7–9).”
From Oxytocin enhances observational fear in mice (2017) · cites this paper as [9]
In rats and mice, emotional contagion of others' distress brought about by foot shocks increased if the rats and mice had experienced foot shocks in the past.
“In rats and mice, the emotional contagion of others' distress brought about by foot shocks increased if the rats and mice had experienced the foot shocks in the past (Atsak et al., 2011; Sanders et al., 2013).”
From Helping behavior in prairie voles: a model of empathy and the importance of oxytocin (2022) · cites this paper as Sanders et al., 2013
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BackgroundMethodResultInfluentialRodent models for studying empathy
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“Indeed, observer mice froze more when they had a similar shock experience 24 hours earlier.(33) A recent study also showed that observer mice with prior shock experience showed more robust acquisition of tone-dependent fear response than naïve mice during observational conditioning.”
BackgroundResultBidirectional cingulate-dependent danger information transfer across rats
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“In contrast, in mice the effect of pre-exposure is not clear, as some studies that explicitly examined the role of pre-exposure find that it is necessary to pre-expose animals (Sanders et al., 2013), while other studies, in agreement with our results, find that it is not required in mice (Kavaliers et al.”
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BackgroundRepeated Witnessing of Conspecifics in Pain: Effects on Emotional Contagion
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A Model to guide force-based manipulation research and practice
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- Authors
- Sanders, J., Mayford, M., & Jeste, D.
- Affiliations
- University of California San Diego (US)
- Scripps Research Institute (US)
- Corresponding author
- Sanders, Jeff
- Venue
- PLoS ONE
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2013-09-18
- Volume
- 8
- Issue
- 9
- Pages
- e74609
- ISSN
- 1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC3776853
- OpenAlex
- W2082598606
- Cited by
- 90
- References
- 52
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 8 · 2018: 14 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 12 · 2015: 7 · 2014: 3
- FWCI
- 4.01
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health
- National Institute of Mental Health (MH057368, R01MH057368, T32MH019934)
- National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01DA028300, DA028300)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Neuroendocrine regulation and behavior
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Action Observation and Synchronization
- Keywords
- empathy, fear response, collective experience, footshock, emotional contagion, swim stress
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Electroshock, Empathy, Extremities, Fear, Female, Humans, Male, Mice, Inbred C57BL, Recognition, Psychology, Freezing Reaction, Cataleptic, Mice
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