Social modulation of and by pain in mice and humans

来自我实验室的HQP的研究结果表明，在啮齿动物和人类身上，可以完全翻译的方式证明和研究同理心、从属关系和亲社会行为。例如，我们发现，只有熟悉的人和小鼠表现出疼痛的情感传染(即对疼痛的共鸣)，而在这两个物种中，陌生人之间的情感传染都被下丘脑-垂体-肾上腺应激反应所阻断。最近，我们发现，在人类中，就像在老鼠身上一样，女性会对其他痛苦的人采取社交行为，而男性则不会。拟议的研究计划旨在继续调查影响疼痛的平行社会现象，以及疼痛对人类和小鼠的社会行为的平行影响。我们将使用两个物种中最具行为学相关性的实用技术来做到这一点。在人类参与者中进行的社会心理学实验将涉及各种社交互动、化学信号的呈现以及使用冷加压任务进行疼痛测试。在小鼠身上，我们将在实验室建立一个可见的洞穴系统来研究社会行为，而不会受到实验室畜牧业和实验室行为测试中固有的压力的主要混淆。由于我们到目前为止在这一领域获得的数据显示出明显的性别差异，我们也将尝试进一步调查这些差异的性质。这将在一定程度上利用发展的观点来实现，以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口中看到。预计这些研究将对我们理解遗传和社会文化对社会现象的作用，如移情和亲社会，以及性别和性别差异的影响。

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.