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疼痛共情：一个新的生物-社会心理-行为学实验动物模型

陈军, 李震, 吕云飞, 李春丽, 王燕, 王蕊蕊, 耿凯文, 何婷

第四军医大学唐都医院疼痛生物医学研究所，西安 710038；全军脑应激与行为重点实验室，西安 710038；北京脑重大疾病研究院，北京 100069

摘要

疼痛共情是一种亲社会行为，是一种能够理解和分享他人情绪状态的能力。从广义上讲，共情也是利他主义的社会行为学基础。共情发育受损可能与自闭症、自恋症、人格障碍、精神分裂症和抑郁等发生密切相关。研究共情的脑机理不仅具有重要的科学和临床意义，还具有普遍的社会意义。然而，由于共情一直被认为是人之所以区别于其它动物的主要特征，所以长期以来很少有学者触及，致使这个领域一直处于空白状态。2006年加拿大麦吉尔大学一个研究组首先发现一只处于疼痛状态的小鼠可以在社交时通过情绪传染把疼痛传染给它的同笼伴侣，使其痛阈下降，痛反应增强，但陌生者间无此现象。2014年我们实验室又发现一只大鼠在与处于疼痛状态的同笼大鼠社交30 min后，痛阈仍下降，痛反应仍增强，提示疼痛共情可长时间持续(共情记忆)。我们还探查出内侧前额叶(包括前扣带回、前边缘皮质、下边缘皮质)参与大鼠的疼痛共情持续，提示中枢神经系统内存在一个与疼痛共情有关的神经网络环路。本文将简要介绍人和啮齿类动物疼痛共情的研究现状和挑战，旨在为研究疼痛及其情绪共病提供一个新的模型和研究思路，更为认识脑功能提供一个生物-社会心理-行为学研究范式。

关键词： 共情; 亲社会行为; 疼痛; 情绪

分类号：R395

[Empathy for pain: A novel bio-psychosocial-behavioral laboratory animal model.] [Article in Chinese]

Chen Jun, LI Zhen, LV Yun-Fei, LI Chun-Li, WANG Yan, WANG Rui-Rui, GENG Kai-Wen, HE Ting

Institute for Biomedical Sciences of Pain, Tangdu Hospital, The Fourth Military Medical University, Xi’an 710038, China； Key Laboratory of Brain Stress and Behavior, PLA, Xi’an 710038, China； Beijing Institute for Brain Disorders, Beijing 100069, China

Abstract

Empathy, a basic prosocial behavior, is referred to as an ability to understand and share others’ emotional state. Generally, empathy is also a social-behavioral basis of altruism. In contrast, impairment of empathy development may be associated with autism, narcissism, alexithymia, personality disorder, schizophrenia and depression. Thus, study of the brain mechanisms of empathy has great importance to not only scientific and clinical advances but also social harmony. However, research on empathy has long been avoided due to the fact that it has been considered as a distinct feature of human beings from animals, leading to paucity of knowledge in the field. In 2006, a Canadian group from McGill University found that a mouse in pain could be shared by its paired cagemate, but not a paired stranger, showing decreased pain threshold and increased pain responses through emotional contagion while they were socially interacting. In 2014, we further found that a rat in pain could also be shared by its paired cagemate 30 min after social interaction, showing long-term decreased pain threshold and increased pain responses, suggesting persistence of empathy for pain (empathic memory). We also mapped out that the medial prefrontal cortex, including the anterior cingulate cortex, prelimbic cortex and infralimbic cortex, is involved in empathy for pain in rats, suggesting that a neural network may be associated with development of pain empathy in the CNS. In the present brief review, we give a brief outline of the advances and challenges in study of empathy for pain in humans and animals, and try to provide a novel bio-psychosocial-behavioral model for study of pain and its emotional comorbidity using laboratory animals.

Key words: empathy; prosocial behavior; pain; emotion

收稿日期：2015-06-05　　录用日期：2015-10-08

通讯作者：陈军　　E-mail: junchen@fmmu.edu.cn

引用本文：

陈军, 李震, 吕云飞, 李春丽, 王燕, 王蕊蕊, 耿凯文, 何婷. 疼痛共情：一个新的生物-社会心理-行为学实验动物模型[J]. 生理学报 2015; 67 (6): 561-570.

Chen Jun, LI Zhen, LV Yun-Fei, LI Chun-Li, WANG Yan, WANG Rui-Rui, GENG Kai-Wen, HE Ting. [Empathy for pain: A novel bio-psychosocial-behavioral laboratory animal model.] [Article in Chinese] . Acta Physiol Sin 2015; 67 (6): 561-570 (in Chinese with English abstract).