Social modulation of and by pain in mice and humans

在我的实验室里，HQP的研究结果表明，同理心、隶属关系和亲社会行为可以在啮齿动物和人类身上得到证明和研究，并且可以从一个物种到另一个物种完全转化。例如，我们发现在人类和老鼠中，只有熟悉的人才会表现出对疼痛的情绪传染（即同情），而在这两个物种中，陌生人之间的情绪传染被下丘脑-垂体-肾上腺应激反应所阻止。最近，我们发现在人类中，就像在老鼠中一样，女性在痛苦中会对他人采取社交行为，而男性则不会。拟议的研究计划旨在继续研究影响疼痛的平行社会现象，以及疼痛对社会行为的平行影响，在小鼠和人类中都是如此。我们将在这两个物种中使用最实用的行为学相关技术。人类社会心理学实验将包括各种各样的社会互动，化学信号的呈现，以及使用冷压力任务的疼痛测试。在小鼠中，我们将在实验室中建立一个可见的洞穴系统，以研究社会行为，而不会受到实验室动物饲养和实验室行为测试中固有的压力的主要干扰。由于我们迄今为止在这一领域获得的数据显示出强大的性别差异，我们也将尝试进一步调查这些差异的本质。这将在一定程度上利用发展的观点来评估在年轻人中观察到的差异是否也可以在儿科和成年人群中看到。预计这些研究将对我们理解基因与社会文化对共情和亲社会等社会现象的影响，以及其中的性别与性别差异的作用产生影响。

Findings from HQP in my laboratory have suggested that empathy, affiliation and prosocial behaviour can be demonstrated and studied in rodents as well as humans, in a completely translational manner from one species to another. For example, we have found that in both humans and mice that only familiars demonstrate emotional contagion of (i.e., empathy for) pain, and in both species emotional contagion among strangers is blocked by the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal stress response. More recently, we have found that in humans, like in mice, females engage in social approach behaviour to others in pain, whereas males do not. The proposed research program is designed to continue to investigate parallel social phenomena affecting pain, and parallel effects of pain on social behaviour, in both mice and humans. We will do so using the most ethologically relevant techniques practical in both species. Social psychology experiments in human participants will involve a variety of social interactions, presentation of chemosignals, and pain testing using the cold-pressor task. In mice, we will institute a visible burrow system in the laboratory to study social behaviours without the major confounds of stress inherent in both laboratory animal husbandry and laboratory behavioural testing. Since our data obtained to date in this domain shows robust sex differences, we will also attempt to further investigate the nature of these differences. This will be achieved partly using a developmental perspective, to assess whether differences observed in young adults can also be seen in pediatric and mature adult populations. It is anticipated that these studies will have implications for our understanding of the role of genetics versus sociocultural influences on social phenomena such as empathy and prosociality, and for sex versus gender differences therein.