What voles can tell us about human empathy
Study on role of hormone in animals’ social behaviour may hold clues about autism
Empathy research is a big topic in neuroscience these days, with a growing number of studies focused on how emotions figure into people’s thoughts and actions.
One of the main things we’ve learned is that various non-human species are also able to recognize the distress of others and respond in a comforting way — suggesting that this may be something in the neural wiring of the brain rather than something that is learned.
The latest study on this topic, published in the journal Science, involves prairie voles, which are known for having strong family bonds similar to those of humans. Vole mates tend to form lifelong relationships and work together to care for their offspring. Researchers Larry Young and James Burkett from Emory University in Atlanta ran an experiment that involved separating vole families and exposing only some of them to mild shocks.
When the researchers reunited the voles with their relatives, they found that the voles tried to soothe the ones that were shocked — as these animals do by licking each other — longer than those who were not shocked.
Then the researchers ran the experiment again after blocking the animals’ receptors for oxytocin, which is thought to play a role in social recognition and maternal behaviours.
They found that this stopped the consoling behaviour.
The researchers said that breaking down the role of oxytocin in empathy may help us better understand and treat psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, as well as developmental disabilities, such as autism spectrum disorder, that appear to be related to a disruption of a person’s ability to detect and respond to the emotions of others.
The researchers suggested this indicates that oxytocin may improve social engagement in autism.
“Many complex human traits have their roots in fundamental brain processes that are shared among many other species,” Young said, according to the publication. “We now have the opportunity to explore in detail the neural mechanisms underlying empathetic responses in a laboratory rodent with clear implications for humans.”
Other experts have loftier goals for empathy research, and some have even suggested that it could hold the key to our survival.
In a 2013 piece, the New Yorker reported that two recent books — The Empathic Civilization, by Jeremy Rifkin, and Humanity on a Tightrope, by Paul R. Ehrlich and Robert E. Ornstein — “make the powerful argument that empathy has been the main driver of human progress, and that we need more of it if our species is to survive.”