Why do we need comfort when Nature's experiment failed?

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iNature's ability to help and care for others can cultivate social cohesion and is vital to the physical and mental health of social species, including humans
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Pro-social contact, such as allogrooming behavior (mutual grooming behavior), is a major type of pro-social behavior that can provide comfort to others
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Affinity contact helps to establish and strengthen the social connection between animals, and helps to comfort the suffering animals of the same species.
However, how does pro-social behavior occur, and the neurobiological mechanism of its coding and regulation in the neural network It's not clear yet
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On October 13, 2021, the University of California, Los Angeles, UCLA Hong Weizhe and Ye Emily Wu jointly published a research paper entitled "Neural control of affiliative touch in prosocial interaction" in Nature Online.
The study showed that mice have troubled partners Exhibiting mutual grooming behavior provides a comforting effect
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The increase in mutual grooming is a response to different types of stressors and can be caused by olfactory cues from distressed individuals
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Using microendoscopic calcium imaging, the study found that neural activity in the medial amygdala (MeA) responds differently to naive and distressed mutual grooming and encodes mutual grooming behavior
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Through cross-functional operations, the study established the direct causal role of MeA in controlling mutual grooming, and identified a selected subpopulation of MeA GABAergic (expressing γ-aminobutyric acid) neurons expressing tachykinin.
The projection on the inside promotes this behavior
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In short, this work has deeply analyzed the prosocial behaviors in mice, revealed the neural coding method of this behavior in MeA, and discovered a new neural circuit mechanism in the brain that controls this behavior
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Helping and caring for others constitute our social life-without these actions, we risk losing family, community, and our own well-being
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In a wide variety of social species, humans and other animals exhibit pro-social behaviors such as comfort, help, and resource sharing to support other people’s emotions, goals, and/or material needs
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Although these behaviors are usually driven by empathy, prosocial behavior transcends the basic perception and sharing of other people’s emotional states by directing positive and targeted behavioral responses to other people in need
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However, the neural mechanisms of how animals help and benefit others remain largely unclear
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Affinity social contact, such as empathy, is a common form of pro-social comforting behavior that can provide a pleasant experience for others, and often occurs in the context of comfort to reduce the pressure on the recipient
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Mutual grooming plays a vital role in establishing and strengthening social connections among a wide range of social species, such as birds, rodents, canines, equines, and primates
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In humans, related forms of social contact-such as tapping, caressing, and hugging-often have similar functions and are essential to our social life
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However, little is known about the neural circuits that encode and promote affinity touch in pro-social interactions
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The study showed that mice showed mutual grooming behavior to troubled partners, providing a comforting effect
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The increase in mutual grooming is a response to different types of stressors and can be caused by the olfactory cues of the distressed individual
.

Using microendoscopic calcium imaging, the study found that neural activity in the medial amygdala (MeA) responds differently to naive and distressed mutual grooming and encodes mutual grooming behavior
.

Through cross-functional operations, the study established the direct causal role of MeA in controlling mutual grooming, and identified a selected subpopulation of MeA GABAergic (expressing γ-aminobutyric acid) neurons expressing tachykinin.
The projection on the inside promotes this behavior
.

In conclusion, the study showed that mice exhibited pro-social comforting behavior and revealed a neural circuit mechanism that is the basis for the coding and control of affinity touch during pro-social interaction
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