Emotional Mirror Neurons in the Rat's Anterior Cingulate Cortex.

ABSTRACT: How do the emotions of others affect us? The human anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) responds while experiencing pain in the self and witnessing pain in others, but the underlying cellular mechanisms remain poorly understood. Here we show the rat ACC (area 24) contains neurons responding when a rat experiences pain as triggered by a laser and while witnessing another rat receive footshocks. Most of these neurons do not respond to a fear-conditioned sound (CS). Deactivating this region reduces freezing while witnessing footshocks to others but not while hearing the CS. A decoder trained on spike counts while witnessing footshocks to another rat can decode stimulus intensity both while witnessing pain in another and while experiencing the pain first-hand. Mirror-like neurons thus exist in the

SUBMITTER: Carrillo M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6488290 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature