Rat behavior and dopamine release are modulated by conspecific distress

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 occu...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:eLife 2018-11, Vol.7
Main Authors: Lichtenberg, Nina T, Lee, Brian, Kashtelyan, Vadim, Chappa, Bharadwaja S, Girma, Henok T, Green, Elizabeth A, Kantor, Shir, Lagowala, Dave A, Myers, Matthew A, Potemri, Danielle, Pecukonis, Meredith G, Tesfay, Robel T, Walters, Michael S, Zhao, Adam C, Blair, R James R, Cheer, Joseph F, Roesch, Matthew R
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
accumbens
Animals
Behavior
Behavior, Animal
Brain research
Dopamine
Dopamine - metabolism
Electroshock
empathy
Male
Neuroscience
Neurosciences
Noise
Phenols (Class of compounds)
Rats, Sprague-Dawley
Reinforcement
Reward
social
Social aspects
Social Behavior
Social interactions
striatum
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary: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.
ISSN:2050-084X
2050-084X
DOI:10.7554/elife.38090