Low empathy-like behaviour in male mice associates with impaired sociability, emotional memory, physiological stress reactivity and variations in neurobiological regulations
| Autor: | Marco Fiore, Giovanni Laviola, Valentina Carito, Damien Huzard, Francesca Zoratto, Simone Macrì, Danilo Ingiosi |
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| Rok vydání: | 2017 |
| Předmět: |
0301 basic medicine
Male Physiology Peptide Hormones Emotions Sensory Physiology lcsh:Medicine Social Sciences Emotional contagion Oxytocin Biochemistry Mice 0302 clinical medicine Medicine and Health Sciences Psychology lcsh:Science Prefrontal cortex media_common Mammals Mice Inbred BALB C Multidisciplinary Animal Behavior Brain Eukaryota Neurochemistry Impaired memory Sensory Systems Somatosensory System Conduct disorder Receptors Oxytocin Vertebrates Neurochemicals Anatomy Clinical psychology Research Article Hypothalamo-Hypophyseal System Vasopressins media_common.quotation_subject Psychological Stress Prefrontal Cortex Empathy Stimulus (physiology) Rodents 03 medical and health sciences Memory Stress Physiological Mental Health and Psychiatry medicine Animals Receptor trkB Behavior lcsh:R Stressor Organisms Biology and Life Sciences Pain Sensation medicine.disease Oxytocin receptor Hormones 030104 developmental biology Amniotes lcsh:Q Zoology 030217 neurology & neurosurgery Neuroscience |
| Zdroj: | PLoS ONE PLoS ONE, Vol 12, Iss 12, p e0188907 (2017) |
| ISSN: | 1932-6203 |
| Popis: | Deficits in empathy have been proposed to constitute a hallmark of several psychiatric disturbances like conduct disorder, antisocial and narcissistic personality disorders. Limited sensitivity to punishment, shallow or deficient affect and reduced physiological reactivity to environmental stressors have been often reported to co-occur with limited empathy and contribute to the onset of antisocial phenotypes. Empathy in its simplest form (i.e. emotional contagion) is addressed in preclinical models through the evaluation of the social transmission of emotional states: mice exposed to a painful stimulus display a higher response if in the presence of a familiar individual experiencing a higher degree of discomfort, than in isolation. In the present study, we investigated whether a reduction of emotional contagion can be considered a predictor of reduced sociality, sensitivity to punishment and physiological stress reactivity. To this aim, we first evaluated emotional contagion in a group of Balb/cJ mice and then discretised their values in four quartiles. The upper (i.e. Emotional Contagion Prone, ECP) and the lower (i.e. Emotional Contagion Resistant, ECR) quartiles constituted the experimental groups. Our results indicate that mice in the lower quartile are characterized by reduced sociability, impaired memory of negative events and dampened hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical reactivity to external stressors. Furthermore, in the absence of changes in oxytocin receptor density, we show that these mice exhibit elevated concentrations of oxytocin and vasopressin and reduced density of BDNF receptors in behaviourally-relevant brain areas. Thus, not only do present results translate to the preclinical investigation of psychiatric disturbances, but also they can contribute to the study of emotional contagion in terms of its adaptive significance. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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