Mice may ‘catch’ each other’s pain — and pain relief

“Not surprisingly, the circuits that they’re looking at are remarkably similar to some of these processes in humans,” says Jules Panksepp, a social neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who was not part of the study. Both mice and humans share a connectedness with their compatriots in emotional situations, he says, and research points to a shared evolutionary basis for empathy.