Summary: Researchers have uncovered a brain mechanism in the prefrontal cortex that determines how animals respond to others’ emotions based on their own past experiences. These neurons, producing corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF), act as emotional memories, modulating responses to socio-emotional stimuli.
The study demonstrates that animals can recognize and react to emotional states in others, particularly when these states mirror their own past experiences. These findings shed light on how empathy is conserved across species and open avenues for targeted therapies for conditions like PTSD, autism, and schizophrenia.
Key Facts:
- Emotional Memory Cells: CRF-producing neurons in the prefrontal cortex modulate empathetic responses based on past experiences.
- Empathy in Animals: Animals respond empathetically only if their past experience matches the observed emotional state in others.
- Therapeutic Insights: Understanding these mechanisms may aid in developing treatments for psychiatric conditions with impaired empathy.
Source: IIT
A specific brain mechanism modulates how animals respond empathetically to others’ emotions.
This is the latest finding from the research unit Genetics of Cognition, led by Francesco Papaleo, Principal Investigator at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT – Italian Institute of Technology) and affiliated with IRCCS Ospedale Policlinico San Martino in Genova.
The study, recently published in Nature Neuroscience, provides new insights into psychiatric conditions where this socio-cognitive skill is impaired, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), autism, and schizophrenia.
Psychological studies have shown that the way humans respond to others’ emotions is strongly influenced by their own past emotional experiences. When a similar emotional situation—such as a past stressful event—is observed in another person, we can react in two different ways.
On one hand, it may generate empathy, enhancing the ability to understand others’ problems and increasing sensitivity to others altered emotions. On the other hand, it may induce self-distress resulting into an avoidance towards others.
The research group at IIT has demonstrated that a similar phenomenon also occurs in animals: recalling a negative experience strongly influences how an individual responds to another who is experiencing that same altered emotional state.
More specifically, animals exhibit different reactions only if the negative event they experienced in the past is identical to the one they observe in others. This indicates that even animals can specifically recognize an emotional state and react accordingly even without directly seeing the triggering stimuli.
Although the ability to respond to others’ emotions has profound impact in our everyday life and this is evolutionary conserved between humans and animals, the brain mechanisms that modulate its expression remain unclear.
Papaleo’s group has identified the crucial role of the prefrontal cortex in these socio-cognitive processes. They conducted preclinical tests and employed advanced techniques to study the brain mechanisms underlying emphatic-related behaviors.
Their findings reveal that a specific group of cells is a key modulator of emotional reactions to others based on emotional self-experience.
These neurons produce corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF), a molecule involved in the stress-response mechanism, and according to IIT researchers, they function as a sort of emotional memory, influencing reactions to socio-emotional stimuli.
“Understanding these brain mechanisms with such precision could help clarify many aspects of human reactions to others’ emotions,” said Francesco Papaleo, coordinator of the Genetics of Cognition unit at IIT.
“For example, why, based on past emotional experience, some people tend to avoid others in stress, while others are more prone to help.”
“Moreover, identifying the specific brain mechanisms involved in modulating empathetic responses,” added Federica Maltese, first author of the study and currently a researcher at National Research Center (CNR) in Milan, “could aid clinical research in developing new targeted therapies aimed at improving the altered emotional responses observed in various psychiatric conditions.”
About this empathy and memory research news
Author: Valeria delle Cave
Source: IIT
Contact: Valeria delle Cave – IIT
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Closed access.
“Self-experience of a negative event alters responses to others in similar states through prefrontal cortex CRF mechanisms” by Francesco Papaleo et al. Nature Neuroscience
Abstract
Self-experience of a negative event alters responses to others in similar states through prefrontal cortex CRF mechanisms
Our own experience of emotional events influences how we approach and react to others’ emotions.
Here, we observe that mice exhibit divergent interindividual responses to others under stress (that is, preference or avoidance) only if they have previously experienced the same aversive event.
These responses are estrus dependent in females and dominance dependent in males. Notably, silencing the expression of the corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) within the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) attenuates the impact of stress self-experience on the reaction to others’ stress.
In vivo microendoscopic calcium imaging revealed that mPFC CRF neurons are activated more toward others’ stress only following the same negative self-experience.
Optogenetic manipulations confirmed that higher activation of mPFC CRF neurons is responsible for the switch from preference to avoidance of others in stress, but only following stress self-experience.
These results provide a neurobiological substrate underlying how an individual’s emotional experience influences their approach toward others in a negative emotional state.
