Learning from others to cope with biting flies: Social learning of fear-induced conditioned analgesia and active avoidance.

Abstract

Although fear conditioning has received extensive attention, little is known about the roles of social learning whereby an individual may learn and acquire the fear responses of another. The authors examined individually and socially mediated acquisition of fear and analgesia to the natural aversive stimulus of biting flies. Exposure to biting flies elicited in individual naive mice analgesia and active self-burying to avoid the flies. When exposed 24 hr later to flies whose biting parts were removed, but not to nonbiting house flies, these mice displayed conditioned analgesia and self-burying. This "one-trial" conditioned analgesia and avoidance was also acquired through social learning without direct individual experience with biting flies. Naive "observer" mice that witnessed other "demonstrator" mice being attacked by biting flies exhibited analgesia and self-burying 24 hr later to altered flies.

Anterior Cingulate Cortex Contributes to Alcohol Withdrawal- Induced and Socially Transferred Hyperalgesia

“…However, hyperalgesia during alcohol WD is not reversed by inhibition of corticosteroid synthesis or accompanied by other behavioral indicators of intense stress (e.g., changes in behavior in the elevated plus maze; Smith et al, 2016). Moreover, intense stress has been shown repeatedly to lead to hypoalgesia in observers rather than hyperalgesia (Miczek et al, 1985; Rodgers and Randall, 1986; Kavaliers et al, 2001), and blocking glucocorticoid signaling in an observer to reduce social stress can unmask socially transferred hyperalgesia (Martin et al, 2015). Viewed collectively, these lines of evidence argue that while alcohol WD may involve some stress-related elements, exposure to social cues related to alcohol WD does not.…”

Behavioral and mechanistic insight into rodent empathy

“…This requires the distress of another to be recognized in order to engage empathy-related circuitry. One of the first demonstrations of social fear learning involved placing a demonstrator mouse in a cage with biting flies while an observer mouse watched the demonstrator in distress (Kavaliers et al, 2001a). The next day, the observer mouse was exposed to flies whose biting appendages were removed.…”

Social Reward and Empathy as Proximal Contributions to Altruism: The Camaraderie Effect

“…Experiments that use etho- logically relevant threats may not require direct individual experience with the aversive stimulus. Mice bury themselves in cage bedding to escape from biting flies after they observe a single successful escape (Kavaliers et al 2001). These subjects also express decreased pain sensitivity, suggesting they sense the pain experienced by the demonstrators.…”