Publication Date:
2006-07-01
Description:
Empathy is thought to be unique to higher primates, possibly to humans alone. We report the modulation of pain sensitivity in mice produced solely by exposure to their cagemates, but not to strangers, in pain. Mice tested in dyads and given an identical noxious stimulus displayed increased pain behaviors with statistically greater co-occurrence, effects dependent on visual observation. When familiar mice were given noxious stimuli of different intensities, their pain behavior was influenced by their neighbor's status bidirectionally. Finally, observation of a cagemate in pain altered pain sensitivity of an entirely different modality, suggesting that nociceptive mechanisms in general are sensitized.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Langford, Dale J -- Crager, Sara E -- Shehzad, Zarrar -- Smith, Shad B -- Sotocinal, Susana G -- Levenstadt, Jeremy S -- Chanda, Mona Lisa -- Levitin, Daniel J -- Mogil, Jeffrey S -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2006 Jun 30;312(5782):1967-70.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Psychology and Centre for Research on Pain, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 1B1, Canada.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16809545" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Altruism
;
Animals
;
Behavior, Animal
;
Cues
;
*Empathy
;
Female
;
Formaldehyde/administration & dosage
;
Hot Temperature
;
Male
;
Mice/*psychology
;
Pain/*psychology
;
Pain Measurement
;
*Social Behavior
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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