PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Yingying Han
AU  - Rune Bruls
AU  - Rajat Mani Thomas
AU  - Vasiliki Pentaraki
AU  - Naomi Jelinek
AU  - Mirjam Heinemans
AU  - Iege Bassez
AU  - Sam Verschooren
AU  - Illanah Pruis
AU  - Thijs Van Lierde
AU  - Nathaly Carrillo
AU  - Valeria Gazzola
AU  - Maria Carrillo
AU  - Christian Keysers
TI  - Cingulate dependent social risk assessment in rats
AID  - 10.1101/452169
DP  - 2018 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 452169
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/12/01/452169.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/12/01/452169.full
AB  - Social transmission of distress has been conceived of as a one-way phenomenon in which an observer catches the emotions of another. Here we use a paradigm in which an observer rat witnesses another receive electro-shocks. Bayesian model comparison and Granger causality argue against this one-way vision in favor of bidirectional information transfer: how the observer reacts to the demonstrator’s distress influences the behavior of the demonstrator. Intriguingly, this was true to a similar extent across highly familiar and entirely unfamiliar rats. Injecting muscimol in the anterior cingulate of observers reduced freezing in the observers and in the demonstrators receiving the shocks. That rats share the distress of unfamiliar strains is at odds with evolutionary thinking that empathy should be biased towards close individuals. Using simulations, we support the complementary notion that distress transmission could be selected to more efficiently detect dangers in a group.