The neural correlates of empathy

Empathy is characterized by the ability to understand and share an emotional experience with another person and is closely tied to compassion and concern for others. Consequently, this increased emotional awareness and sensitivity may also be related to increased anxiety.

The link is to a commentary on research, which identified the neural circuits involved when mice feel another mouse's pain (empathize with them).  This will allow us to identify variations in the noted circuitry that result in lower or higher empathy.  In the future, it will also allow us to identify the developmental genes that create these neural correlates of empathy.  I judge the chances that these same neural correlates of empathy are found in humans as very high.

Finding those genes in mice will allow us to use simple genetic screens to determine if people with low empathy have learned that less-than-socially-desired behavior or if they have inherited a suite of genes that makes them more susceptible to expressing low empathy.  Perhaps those "susceptibility" genes have "crossed paths" with a particular environmental cue that essentially triggered them to reframe these neural correlates of empathy.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6525/122?fbclid=IwAR04tq_R92sbtLjgWdTbY76P5rEOSvCLOmfHSsp-QIk41ZJ4Jxp9W4oXies https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2019.00094/full