ELSC Seminar Series

The drive to act for the benefit of others, termed prosocial behavior, is a crucial building block of life in society, and is often motivated by empathy for others’ distress. Yet, the identity of the individual in distress is a major modulator of prosocial motivation, and there is a gap in empathy for ingroup and outgroup members. To Understand how group identity is represented in the brain and influences prosocial motivation, we employ a unique model of empathic helping behavior in rats to describe alterations to neural networks specifically linked to prosocial decisions in rats faced with ingroup or outgroup members in distress. We combine imaging of cell activity, functional manipulations and computational methods in a systems approach, attempting to understand brain-wide states associated with this complex behavior.