其他摘要 | Empathy is an important basis for social communication. Not only humans have the ability to empathize, but other mammals (especially non-human primates) also often exhibit empathy. In recent years, researchers have begun to pay attention to the empathy behavior of rodents, trying to use rodent models to reveal the cognitive neurological mechanism of empathy.
At present, most animal empathy models are based on the phenomenon of pain empathy. Pain empathy is the perception, experience, and emotional response to other people's pain, that is, the "empathy" of other people's pain. Pain empathy can prompt individuals to understand and perceive the pain of others, and perceiving others in a painful situation can make individuals remain vigilant against dangerous stimuli or situations and make defensive behavioral responses to protect themselves from harm. However, the current pain empathy models have problems such as insensitive indicators and difficult interpretation of behaviors, and the validity of the model has not been verified from the level of empathy damage and neural activity.
This paper classifies and sorts out the existing animal models, with the purpose of integrating the characteristics of the existing models to propose a more reasonable and easy-to-interpret empathy model. For this reason, this research mainly raises the following questions. First, how to innovatively construct an effective and standard and stable empathy model; second, how to define the behavior of rats in the model as empathy behavior; third,Whether the model can detect empathy defects sensitively; fourth, whether the empathy and non-empathy behaviors of animals in the model correspond to different neural activity patterns.
In order to answer the above questions, this study sets the following research goals:(1)Establish an empathy model with objective and clear indicators and use noxious stimuli; (2) Verify whether the behavior in the model is consistent with empathic behavior; (3) Explore sociality The performance of injured rats in this model; (4) Changes in the firing of rat neurons during empathy.
Based on the above research goals, this paper has designed four studies. The first study established a rat empathy model based on pain empathy and approaching behavior. This model uses the movement trajectory of rats entering the surrounding area of interest of the same kind and the behavior generated in the area of interest as empathy-like behaviors, and”The operative definition of "empathy一like behavior" is defined as:in the area of interest surrounding the same type, the observer produces behaviors that are interested in the same type. These behaviors include the length of time close to the same type, the distance of movement, or the static in the area The duration and number of behaviors and rigid behaviors. Using this operational definition to define empathy-like behaviors, it is found that the empathy-like behaviors produced by observing rats when observing the same kind of noxious stimuli are significantly higher than the empathy一like behaviors produced when receiving neutral stimuli. The empathy一like behaviors produced will be significantly higher than the empathy一like behaviors produced when there is no similar type.
In order to further explore the validity of the model established in Study 1,Study 2 tested the validity of the model by adjusting the past experience of rats and the social relationship between rats. Experiment 2 found that nociceptive experience can significantly affect the empathy-like behaviors of rats towards the same kind. This effect is manifested in rats with past noxious experiences that will produce more empathic-like behaviors. Experiment 3 found that familiarity has no significant effect on the empathy-like behavior of rats, which is inconsistent with the results of literature research.
Because the social relationship in the second study did not have a significant effect on the empathy-like behavior of rats, in order to make up for the lack of design that may lead to this result, study three was proposed. Study 3 used socially impaired autistic rats and measured their empathy-like behavior. Experiments have found that in this model, autistic rats are difficult to produce empathy一like behaviors to the same kind. Taking healthy rats as the norm, it was found that the length and number of times of entering the region of interest of autistic rats were significantly lower than that of healthy rats, indicating that autistic rats could not show empathy一like behavior.
Study 4 recorded the electrophysiological activities of neurons in the process of empathy-like behavior in rats from the neuron level. Study 4 found that for healthy rats, the ACC brain area and SI brain area of the observer rat will have an increase in the discharge frequency when the same kind of noxious stimulus is received. This increase is compared with the neutral stimulation condition. The results are remarkable. This situation is common in the entire process of the same kind of receiving noxious stimuli. In autistic rats, whether it is ACC or SI, the rats are not sensitive to the stimuli received by the same type, and the stimulus intensity received by the same type is not comparable to the recorded firing frequency of the ACC and SI neurons of the observer rat. Significantly affected.
Conclusion: In summary, this study successfully established a new rodent empathy model, which has objective and quantifiable indicators, and has a clear operational definition of empathy behavior. The validity test of the model shows that the empathy behavior of rats in the model is affected by their own past experience, which is consistent with the empathy phenomenon of humans; although the model is not sensitive to the familiarity between animals, the model can be sensitive to areas It is divided into normal rats and autistic rats with social deficits, so overall the model has good validity.
Except for the establishment of empathy model in behavioral science, this study used this model to record the neuronal activity in the process of empathic behavior in rats. Autistic rats showed contradictory results in these two brain regions. This may also mean that abnormal circuit functions in autistic rats will affect empathy and social behaviors, and this result is also Need more in-depth research to vertify. |
修改评论