Empathy is a psychological construct that allows individuals to understand and share the emotions of others. The ability to share emotional states relies on basic social mechanisms, such as mimicry and emotional contagion, which are considered building blocks for empathy. Mimicking another’s emotional or physical state is essential for successful social interactions and is found in a number of animal species. For the current review we focus on emotional state sharing in rodents, a core feature of empathy that is often measured using pain and fear as proxies; we also discuss prosociality in rodents. The evidence for empathy in rodents shows that rats and mice consistently imitate arousal states and behaviors of conspecifics and will even sacrifice personal gain to relieve the distress of a conspecific. These behaviors support basic processes that are crucial for the survival of individual animals and give us insight into the neural mechanisms that govern empathy-related behaviors.

同理心是一种心理建构，可以使个人理解并分享他人的情感。共享情感状态的能力依赖于基本的社会机制，例如模仿和情感传染，这些被认为是共情的基础。模仿他人的情绪或身体状态对于成功的社交互动至关重要，这种现象在许多动物中都可以发现。在本篇综述中，我们重点关注啮齿动物的情绪状态共享，这是共情的核心特征，通常以痛苦和​​恐惧作为代理来衡量。我们还讨论了啮齿动物的亲社会性。啮齿类动物有同理心的证据表明，老鼠一直在模仿觉醒状态和同种异体的行为，甚至会牺牲个人收益来减轻同种异体的困扰。