In pain and pain relief, mice may feel for each other.
Research has shown that mice can “catch” the emotions of an injured or fearful fellow.
She and colleagues published their new findings on pain and relief in the Jan. 8 Science. Investigating these building blocks of empathy in animals can help researchers understand human empathy, Smith says, and may someday lead to treatments for disorders that affect the ability to be sensitive to the feelings and experiences of other people.
“Pain isn’t just a physical experience,” Smith says. “It’s an emotional experience” as well.
In experiments on pairs of mice, one mouse received an injection that caused arthritis-like inflammation in one hind paw while the other mouse was unharmed. After hanging out together for an hour, “the bystander has it worse than the mouse that got the injection,” says Jeffrey Mogil, a neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal who was not part of the work.
Injected mice acted as though one paw is in pain, as expected, showing extra sensitivity to being prodded there with a plastic wire. Their uninjured companions also showed heightened sensitivity, and in both hind paws. Those mice act as though they’re in the same amount of pain and in more places, Mogil says. “The behavior is astounding.”
Research has shown that mice can “catch” the emotions of an injured or fearful fellow.
She and colleagues published their new findings on pain and relief in the Jan. 8 Science. Investigating these building blocks of empathy in animals can help researchers understand human empathy, Smith says, and may someday lead to treatments for disorders that affect the ability to be sensitive to the feelings and experiences of other people.
“Pain isn’t just a physical experience,” Smith says. “It’s an emotional experience” as well.
In experiments on pairs of mice, one mouse received an injection that caused arthritis-like inflammation in one hind paw while the other mouse was unharmed. After hanging out together for an hour, “the bystander has it worse than the mouse that got the injection,” says Jeffrey Mogil, a neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal who was not part of the work.
Injected mice acted as though one paw is in pain, as expected, showing extra sensitivity to being prodded there with a plastic wire. Their uninjured companions also showed heightened sensitivity, and in both hind paws. Those mice act as though they’re in the same amount of pain and in more places, Mogil says. “The behavior is astounding.”
