Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, United States.
Gemstone Honors Program, University of Maryland, College Park, United States.
Elife. 2018 Nov 28;7:e38090. doi: 10.7554/eLife.38090.
Rats exhibit 'empathy' making them a model to understand the neural underpinnings of such behavior. We show data consistent with these findings, but also that behavior and dopamine (DA) release reflects subjective rather than objective evaluation of appetitive and aversive events that occur to another. We recorded DA release in two paradigms: one that involved cues predictive of unavoidable shock to the conspecific and another that allowed the rat to refrain from reward when there were harmful consequences to the conspecific. Behavior and DA reflected pro-social interactions in that DA suppression was reduced during cues that predicted shock in the presence of the conspecific and that DA release observed on self-avoidance trials was present when the conspecific was spared. However, DA also increased when the conspecific was shocked instead of the recording rat and DA release during conspecific avoidance trials was lower than when the rat avoided shock for itself.
老鼠表现出“同理心”，这使它们成为理解这种行为神经基础的模型。我们展示了与这些发现一致的数据，但也表明行为和多巴胺（DA）释放反映的是对另一个人经历的奖赏和惩罚事件的主观而非客观评估。我们在两个范式中记录了 DA 的释放：一个范式涉及到对同种动物不可避免的电击的预测线索，另一个范式允许老鼠在对同种动物有不良后果的情况下避免奖励。行为和 DA 反映了亲社会的相互作用，即在同种动物存在的情况下，预测电击的线索会减少 DA 的抑制，而在同种动物免受电击时，自我回避试验中观察到的 DA 释放是存在的。然而，当同种动物受到电击而不是记录老鼠时，DA 也会增加，而在同种动物回避试验中，DA 的释放低于老鼠为自己避免电击时的释放。
