Is "empathy" related to gender? Mouse study: Physical contact increases "altruistic behavior"
Do animals also have “empathy”? Study: Male mice are more “altruistic”
Altruistic behavior caused by “empathy” towards fellow humans is not unique to humans, but also to rats? The complex causes of social selfish behavior and altruistic behavior have always been the object of scientific concern. The latest research in the international journal “Nature Neuroscience” points out that whether mice perform “altruistic” or “selfish” behavior depends on the subject. Whether it is a living species of the same species and the familiarity of the subject. The key lies in the neural connections between the amygdala and the prefrontal lobe in the brain.
The authors noted that male mice were more likely to behave altruistically when encountering another familiar species compared to controls, but the same results were not seen in female mice. Analysis of brain responses revealed that the neural connections in the amygdala that send messages to the prefrontal cortex are related to altruistic behavior, while the neural connections that send messages from the prefrontal lobe to the amygdala regulate selfish behaviors.
Taiwanese experts believe that this study is an animal experiment on mice. In human social neuroscience experiments, there are more and more complex variables that need to be controlled, and individual differences are large and elusive. However, this experimental model can provide a direction for the psychological treatment of social disorders, help to gain a deeper understanding of the causes of social and emotional disorders, and find suitable treatment solutions.
Are there differences in gender and status? Physical contact can help altruistic behavior occur
Lian Zhengzhang, dean of the School of Life Sciences at National Yang-Ming University of Science and Technology, pointed out that gender, hunger status, status, familiarity, emotional state and whether they like to socialize will all affect whether mice adopt altruistic behaviors. One of the interesting things is that physical contact is more likely to promote altruistic behavior than interacting through a transparent partition. In contrast to the current epidemic, people are mostly replacing physical interactions with remote work, which may have some impact on human socialization and altruistic mutual aid behaviors.
However, whether the “altruistic food sharing behavior” of mice is the same as that of humans requires further research. The paper believes that mice may have the concept of “empathy,” but so-called empathy is difficult to quantify in experiments. It is necessary to carefully interpret how altruistic factors affect empathy and regulate the concept of altruistic behavior. In addition, differences in gender and social status will affect the performance of altruistic behavior in mice. It is still unclear whether the same differences are also common in human groups.
Overall, this study establishes a new mouse model of social altruistic behavior, which may provide another avenue for future testing of drugs to improve social impairment and extreme selfish behavior. At the same time, the types of nerve cells underlying the neural connections between the amygdala and the prefrontal lobe are also development directions worthy of subsequent research.
Relationships influence decision-making when “choosing one or the other” Human “individual differences” are elusive
Zheng Yawei, a distinguished professor at the Institute of Neuroscience at National Yang-Ming University, pointed out that this study changed the human version of the happy donation experiment into the mouse version of the “choose-one” experiment, and then discovered that mice are sometimes selfish and sometimes altruistic in society. Decision-making behavior depends on the degree of familiarity with each other, male and female gender, social contact, one’s own state of hunger, social class status, emotional state, etc. At the same time, the most advanced optical fiber and chemical gene technologies are used to further discover the neural mechanisms that regulate social decision-making behavior.
However, this study pointed out that the factors that affect the social decision-making of mice are mostly limited to the relationship between mice, and most of the conclusions reached are scientific consensus. Previous studies on humans in economics have also confirmed that the same factors affect humans’ motivation to donate. However, differences between individuals are still unresolved variables.
Zheng Yawei explained that from the perspective of neural mechanisms, altruistic behavior in mice is regulated by the bidirectional connection between the amygdala and the prefrontal lobe of the brain. The signals from the lateral basal ganglia neurons of the amygdala to the prefrontal lobe will regulate altruistic behavior. Conversely, the amygdala neurons will receive signals from the prefrontal lobe and will bias towards selfish behavior.
However, experiments in social neuroscience have more complex variables that need to be controlled than cognitive factors. Therefore, research obstacles in the field of “social neuroscience” are often daunting. Individual differences are often elusive. In addition, Human experiments require a certain number of cases to achieve statistical differences to avoid false positive conclusions. Therefore, whether this inference can also be applied to human groups and pass the test of reproducibility needs more research to be explored.
Further reading:
