Dual circuits originating from the ventral hippocampus independently facilitate affective empathy
Siqi Peng,
Xiuqi Yang,
Sibie Meng,
Fuyuan Liu,
Yaochen Lv,
Huiquan Yang,
Youyong Kong,
Wei Xie,
Moyi Li
Affiliations
Siqi Peng
School of Life Science and Technology, The Key Laboratory of Developmental Genes and Human Disease, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China
Xiuqi Yang
School of Life Science and Technology, The Key Laboratory of Developmental Genes and Human Disease, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China
Sibie Meng
School of Life Science and Technology, The Key Laboratory of Developmental Genes and Human Disease, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China
Fuyuan Liu
Jiangsu Provincial Joint International Research Laboratory of Medical Information Processing, School of Computer Science and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China
Yaochen Lv
School of Life Science and Technology, The Key Laboratory of Developmental Genes and Human Disease, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China
Huiquan Yang
School of Medicine, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China
Youyong Kong
Jiangsu Provincial Joint International Research Laboratory of Medical Information Processing, School of Computer Science and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China
Wei Xie
School of Life Science and Technology, The Key Laboratory of Developmental Genes and Human Disease, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China; Jiangsu Co-innovation Center of Neuroregeneration, Nantong University, Nantong 226001, China
Moyi Li
School of Life Science and Technology, The Key Laboratory of Developmental Genes and Human Disease, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China; Jiangsu Co-innovation Center of Neuroregeneration, Nantong University, Nantong 226001, China; Corresponding author
Summary: Affective empathy enables social mammals to learn and transfer emotion to conspecifics, but an understanding of the neural circuitry and genetics underlying affective empathy is still very limited. Here, using the naive observational fear between cagemates as a paradigm similar to human affective empathy and chemo/optogenetic neuroactivity manipulation in mouse brain, we investigate the roles of multiple brain regions in mouse affective empathy. Remarkably, two neural circuits originating from the ventral hippocampus, previously unknown to function in empathy, are revealed to regulate naive observational fear. One is from ventral hippocampal pyramidal neurons to lateral septum GABAergic neurons, and the other is from ventral hippocampus pyramidal neurons to nucleus accumbens dopamine-receptor-expressing neurons. Furthermore, we identify the naive observational-fear-encoding neurons in the ventral hippocampus. Our findings highlight the potentially diverse regulatory pathways of empathy in social animals, shedding light on the mechanisms underlying empathy circuity and its disorders.
