ArticleNature communications2025
Cortical representations of affective pain shape empathic fear in male mice.
Article in Nature communications, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Social rank modulates empathic pain via Galntl6Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Article
- Anterior Cingulate Cortex Mediates State-Dependent Prioritization of Distressed Conspecifics.Brain sciences · 2026Article
- Differential modulation of aversive signaling by expectation across the cingulate cortex.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Distinct CaMKII neurons in anterior cingulate cortex regulate anxiety-like behavior and appetite suppression in a model of inflammatory pain.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2026Article
- Heightened empathic responses led by imbalanced cortico-amygdala circuit inbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Editorial: Interplay between chronic pain and affective-cognitive alterations: shared neural mechanisms, circuits, and treatment.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Affect sharing, the ability to vicariously feel others' emotions, constitutes the primary component of empathy. However, the neural basis for encoding others' distress and representing shared affective experiences remains poorly understood. Here, using miniature endoscopic calcium imaging, we identify distinct and dynamic neural ensembles in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) that encode observational fear across both excitatory and inhibitory neurons in male mice. Notably, we discover that the population dynamics encoding vicarious freezing information are conserved in ACC pyramidal neurons and are specifically represented by affective, rather than sensory, responses to direct pain experience. Furthermore, using circuit-specific imaging and optogenetic manipulations, we demonstrate that distinct populations of ACC neurons projecting to the periaqueductal gray (PAG), but not to the basolateral amygdala (BLA), selectively convey affective pain information and regulate observational fear. Taken together, our findings highlight the critical role of ACC neural representations in shaping empathic freezing through the encoding of affective pain.
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Registered trials
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