Empathy as a driver of prosocial behaviour: highly conserved neurobehavioural mechanisms across species.

Empathy reflects the natural ability to perceive and be sensitive to the emotional states of others, coupled with a motivation to care for their well-being. It has evolved in the context of parental care for offspring, as well as within kinship bonds, to help facilitate group living. In this paper, we integrate the perspectives of evolution, animal behaviour, developmental psychology, and social and clinical neuroscience to elucidate our understanding of the proximate mechanisms underlying empathy.

"Feeling" the pain of those who are different from us: Modulation of EEG in the mu/alpha range.

We explored how apparently painful stimuli and the ability to identify with the person on whom the pain is inflicted modulate EEG suppression in the mu/alpha range (8-12 Hz). In a 2 × 2 design, we presented pictures of hands either experiencing needle pricks or being touched by a Q-tip. In the dissimilar-other condition, the hand was assigned to a patient suffering from a neurological disease in which Q-tips inflicted pain, whereas needle pricks did not.

Synergism between immunostimulation and prevention of surgery-induced immune suppression: an approach to reduce post-operative tumor progression.

Background: A unique opportunity to eradicate cancer is presented immediately after the excision of the primary tumor, but surgical procedures often induce the release of immunosuppressing factors that render cell mediated immunity ineffective. Here we tested the hypothesis that integration of peri-operative immunostimulation and blockade of immunosuppression could synergistically improve post-operative anti-metastatic immunity and long-term survival.

Methods: Two syngeneic tumor models in F344 rats were employed, studying post-operative tumor progression.

Immune perturbations in patients along the perioperative period: alterations in cell surface markers and leukocyte subtypes before and after surgery.

Background: Surgery renders patients susceptible to life-threatening complications, including infections, multiple organ failure, and presumably cancer metastases. Surgery-induced immune perturbations were suggested to contribute to such deleterious effects, but also to facilitate post-injury healing. Preoperative psychological and physiological stress responses may contribute to these immune perturbations, and could thus jeopardize patients even before surgery.

Perioperative use of beta-blockers and COX-2 inhibitors may improve immune competence and reduce the risk of tumor metastasis.

Background: COX inhibitors and beta-blockers were recently suggested to reduce cancer progression through inhibition of tumor proliferation and growth factor secretion, induction of tumor apoptosis, and prevention of cellular immune suppression during the critical perioperative period. Here we evaluated the perioperative impact of clinically applicable drugs from these categories in the context of surgery, studying natural killer (NK) cell activity and resistance to experimental metastases.

Methods: F344 rats were treated with COX-1 inhibitors (SC560), COX-2 inhibitors (indomethacin, etodolac, or celecoxib), a beta-blocker (propranolol), or a combination of a COX-2 inhibitor and a beta-blocker (etodolac and propranolol).