Rodents show empathy and compassion, just like us!

Published on June 10, 2022

Empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of others, is crucial for adjusting our behavior based on their emotional state. Recent research has revealed fascinating insights into empathy in rodents, showing that they not only exhibit emotional contagion but also engage in prosocial behavior. Rodents, like humans, have neural structures that are involved in empathy and emotional contagion. When they observe distress in their fellow rodents, they experience a form of emotional contagion and are more likely to approach and interact with them. This behavior strengthens the emotional connection between them. Furthermore, rodents can also learn to engage in behaviors that benefit others, although they do so less reliably and selectively compared to their ability for emotional contagion. These findings highlight the remarkable similarity between rodents and humans in terms of the biological basis of empathy. To dive deeper into this exciting research on emotional contagion and prosocial behavior in rodents, check out the full article!

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.

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