Dual circuits originating from the ventral hippocampus independently facilitate affective empathy
The neural circuitry and genetics underlying affective empathy is not clearly understood.
The researchers have discovered functionally independent dual neural circuitsoriginating 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.
They also classified the neurons in the vHPC that encode observational fear.
https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(24)00605-3
