Empathy - the ability to recognize and respond to the emotional states of others - is a fundamental capacity that supports survival, learning, and social organization. In this talk, I will present our work uncovering the neural mechanisms of empathy-like processes and social learning across species, from rodents to humans. We demonstrate that, much like humans, rats and mice recruit amygdala circuits when responding to the distress of others, with distinct pathways encoding imminent versus distant threats. Remarkably, these circuits are engaged not only by conspecifics but also by human emotional cues, highlighting the evolutionary conservation and cross-species nature of emotional contagion.

Building on this foundation, we investigate how socially transmitted emotions and information shape learning. Using the Eco-HAB system, we show that rodents acquire reward-related knowledge from peers through olfactory cues, with social rank and network position strongly modulating information flow. Plasticity in the prelimbic cortex emerges as a critical substrate for maintaining social network stability and for using socially acquired reward information, while its acute inhibition selectively disrupts responses to social cues. Complementary work using the Socially Transmitted Place Preference paradigm reveals that hippocampal representations of food locations are encoded and reactivated during social interactions.

Together, these findings delineate a distributed neural architecture in which amygdala, prefrontal, and hippocampal circuits integrate emotion, social context, and memory to support empathy-driven social learning and adaptive behavior.