Audible pain squeaks can mediate emotional contagion across pre-exposed rats with a potential effect of auto-conditioning.

ABSTRACT: Footshock self-experience enhances rodents' reactions to the distress of others. Here, we tested one potential mechanism supporting this phenomenon, namely that animals auto-condition to their own pain squeaks during shock pre-exposure. In Experiment 1, shock pre-exposure increased freezing and 22 kHz distress vocalizations while animals listened to the audible pain-squeaks of others. In Experiment 2 and 3, to test the auto-conditioning theory, we weakened the noxious pre-exposure stimulus not to trigger pain squeaks, and compared pre-exposure protocols in which we paired it with squeak playback against unpaired control conditions. Although all animals later showed fear responses to squeak playbacks, these were weaker than following typical pre-exposure (Experiment 1) and not stronger foll

SUBMITTER: Packheiser J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10600148 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature