Helping behavior in prairie voles: A model of empathy and the importance of oxytocin.

Several studies suggest that rodents show empathic responses and helping behavior toward others. We examined whether prairie voles would help conspecifics who were soaked in water by opening a door to a safe area. Door-opening latency decreased as task sessions progressed.

Oxytocin in the anterior cingulate cortex is involved in helping behaviour.

Empathy toward the distress of others is thought to motivate helping behaviour, in the form of voluntary action to eliminate that distress. Neuropeptide oxytocin is associated with various social cognitive abilities, including empathy and prosocial behaviour. The anterior cingulate cortex is known to be one of the brain regions underlying empathy, and one in which oxytocin receptors are expressed.

Oxytocin administration modulates rats' helping behavior depending on social context.

The affiliative effect of oxytocin on behavior toward other individuals can be modulated by positive and negative aspects of those individuals. However, the context-dependent effect of oxytocin on helping behavior is still unclear. In this study, we examined the effect of oxytocin administration on helping behavior in rats.

To take or not to take the shortcut: Flexible spatial behaviour of rats based on cognitive map in a lattice maze.

To examine the flexibility of rats' spatial behaviour, we required rats to navigate to one of four boxes on the corners of a lattice maze. The maze consisted of five vertical and five horizontal corridors on a plane parallel to the ground and allowed us to design diverse routes. One box was set as goal and the other three were set as starting points.