Differential Influence of Social Versus Isolate Housing on Vicarious Fear Learning in Adolescent Mice

Laboratory rodents can adopt the pain or fear of nearby conspecifics. This phenotype conceptually lies within the domain of empathy, a bio-psycho-social process through which individuals come to share each other's emotion. Using a model of cue-conditioned fear, we show here that the expression...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Behavioral neuroscience 2016-04, Vol.130 (2), p.206-211
Main Authors: Panksepp, Jules B, Lahvis, Garet P
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal
Animal Environments
Animal Learning
Animals
Behavior, Animal - physiology
Conditioned Fear
Conditioning (Psychology)
Conditioning, Classical - physiology
Empathy
Empathy - physiology
Fear & phobias
Fear - physiology
Female
Housing, Animal
Learning
Learning - physiology
Male
Mice
Mice, Inbred BALB C
Mice, Inbred C57BL
Rodents
Social Behavior
Social Environment
Social Isolation
Teenagers
Vicarious Experiences
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Summary:Laboratory rodents can adopt the pain or fear of nearby conspecifics. This phenotype conceptually lies within the domain of empathy, a bio-psycho-social process through which individuals come to share each other's emotion. Using a model of cue-conditioned fear, we show here that the expression of vicarious fear varies with respect to whether mice are raised socially or in solitude during adolescence. The impact of the adolescent housing environment was selective: (a) vicarious fear was more influenced than directly acquired fear, (b) "long-term" (24-h postconditioning) vicarious fear memories were stronger than "short-term" (15-min postconditioning) memories in socially reared mice whereas the opposite was true for isolate mice, and (c) females were more fearful than males. Housing differences during adolescence did not alter the general mobility of mice or their vocal response to receiving the unconditioned stimulus. Previous work with this mouse model underscored a genetic influence on vicarious fear learning, and the present study complements these findings by elucidating an interaction between the adolescent social environment and vicarious experience. Collectively, these findings are relevant to developing models of empathy amenable to mechanistic exploitation in the laboratory.
ISSN:0735-7044
1939-0084
DOI:10.1037/bne0000133