What happens in the brain when someone needs help

“Man is a wolf to man” and “Man is good by nature, society corrupts him” – two clearly opposing views on human nature put forward by Thomas Hobbes And Jean-Jacques Rousseaurespectively.

Despite the antithesis that these statements represent, modern sociology teaches us that whether people are good or bad depends largely on circumstances. Thus, both Hobbes’s view and Rousseau’s view are partially correct: it all depends on the context.

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However, it is true that if we see a person involved in an accident, our first reaction is to try to help. So, other things being equal, are we better or worse? As social beings, we are clearly cooperative and altruistic (although this altruism is a complex form of selfishness in that it can seek reciprocity).

Moreover, statistics also seem to suggest that we are killing ourselves less and less. In fact, the level of bloody crime has always been very high since the advent of agriculture, about 13,000 years ago. Only recently, as the history professor notes, has there been a significant decline. Yuval Noah Harari in his latest book Homo Deus:

While in ancient agrarian societies human violence was responsible for about 15 percent of all deaths, in the 20th century violence was responsible for only 5 percent, and in the early 21st century it is responsible for about 1 percent of total deaths.

In fact, we can argue that the West is currently probably the safest place in human history, as detailed in the book What (Will You) Die From?

Altruism and solidarity (in mice)

In search of the origins of kindness, a team of scientists led by a neuroscientist Weizhe Hongfrom the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) conducted a new study on mice.

It was Pio del Rio Ortega, and thanks to him we know the brain better.

We know that people and animals demonstrate various forms of prosocial helping behavior towards those in need. Although previous research has examined how people can perceive the states of others, the neural mechanisms underlying helping responses to others’ needs and goals are not yet fully understood.

In this context, this study shows that mice show a kind of helping behavior towards other people experiencing physical pain and injury through so-called behavior. licking (social licking) specifically targets the site of injurywhich helps recipients cope with pain.

Using microendoscopic imaging, the activity of individual neurons and ensembles of anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) neurons has been found to encode the pain state of others. This representation is different from the general voltage representation in other.

Moreover, functional manipulations demonstrated the causal role of the ACC in bidirectional control. licking managed. Notably, these behaviors are represented in the population code of CCA, which is distinct from the code of general allogrooming, another type of prosocial behavior elicited by the emotional distress of others.

The neural basis of empathy

These results enrich our understanding of the neural encoding and regulation of helping behavior by suggesting that the ability to perceive and respond to the needs of others is rooted in specific neural mechanisms.

Differentiation of neural coding between licking and general allopriming indicates that the brain has specialized systems for different types of prosocial behavior, adapted to respond appropriately to different forms of need or stress in others.

Thus, this discovery not only sheds light on the neural basis of empathy and altruism in animals, but may also provide insight into how these mechanisms may be present and function in humans.