In the article “I Feel You: Emotional Mirror Neurons Found in the Rat,” published in Current Biology and from neurosciencenews.com (https://neurosciencenews.com/emotional-mirror-neurons-rats-11066/), the researchers found that mirror neurons in the anterior cingulate cortex respond to pain experienced by others. This article interests me because although I have learned about empathy in social psychology, I have not viewed it from the biological perspective. It is fascinating to be able to pinpoint a neuronal link to this complex social phenomenon and I hope we are able to uncover more of these links within my lifetime.
In this study, researchers speculated that the cingulate cortex contains mirror neurons and that this is the reason why we feel pain seeing the pain of others. To examine this, researchers observed rats who were watching other rats receive an unpleasant stimulus. Rats tend to freeze when scared to avoid being detected by predators, and the researchers observed this behavior when rats watched other rats receiving this unpleasant stimulus. Upon inspection of the cingulate cortex, it was found that the observing rats activated the same neurons as the rats that received this stimulus, supporting this mirror neuron speculation. The researchers also administered a drug to these observing rats that suppressed the activity of these cingulate cortex cells and found that the rats no longer froze. This was an important find as previously, mirror neurons had only been found in the motor system.
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