Emotional Mirror Neurons in the Rat’s Anterior Cingulate Cortex

Summary

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 ACC that encode the pain of others in a code shared with first-hand pain experience. A smaller population of neurons responded to witnessing footshocks to others and while hearing the CS but not while experiencing laser-triggered pain. These differential responses suggest that the ACC may contain channels that map the distress of another animal onto a mosaic of pain- and fear-sensitive channels in the observer. More experiments are necessary to determine whether painfulness and fearfulness in particular or differences in arousal or salience are responsible for these differential responses.

Graphical Abstract

Highlights

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  Rat ACC contains mirror-like neurons responding to pain experience and observation

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  Most do not respond to another salient negative emotion: fear

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  One can decode pain intensity in the self from a pattern decoding pain in others

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  Deactivating this region (area 24) impairs the social transmission of distress

Abstract

Carrillo et al. show the rat anterior cingulate cortex contains emotional mirror neurons that respond when a rat experiences pain and witnesses another rat in pain but not while experiencing another salient emotion, fear. After cingulate deactivation, rats show reduced distress when witnessing another receive a shock.