Julian Packheiser, Efe Soyman, Enrica Paradiso, Frédéric Michon, Eline Ramaaker, Neslihan Sahin, Sharmistha Muralidharan, Markus Wöhr, Valeria Gazzola, Christian Keysers
Footshock self-experience enhances rodents' reactions to the distress of others. Here, we tested one potential mechanism supporting this phenomenon, namely that animals auto-condition to their own pain squeaks during shock pre-exposure. In Experiment 1, shock pre-exposure increased freezing and 22 kHz distress vocalizations while animals listened to the audible pain-squeaks of others. In Experiment 2 and 3, to test the auto-conditioning theory, we weakened the noxious pre-exposure stimulus not to trigger pain squeaks, and compared pre-exposure protocols in which we paired it with squeak playback against unpaired control conditions...
October 25, 2023: Communications Biology