共情是一种在个体之间传递的情感体验.过去曾普遍认为只有人类才能与其他个体分享情绪并表达高级情感认知过程.然而,近期的神经科学研究显示啮齿类动物在社会活动中也具有分享情感的能力[1-3].在总结近几年关于啮齿类动物的共情研究工作之前,有必要回顾一下两项半个世纪前完成的观察啮齿类动物能否影响其他同类个体的情感状态的研究.其中一个实验通过条件性压杆实验评估小鼠的共情行为.Church等[4]的实验发现,如果受试鼠观察到演示小鼠被电击的过程后,被电击小鼠的痛苦表现对于受试鼠的条件性压杆行为有直接的抑制作用[4].这一现象可持续10 d.

Objective To design a simple and practical system which can automatically identify and monitor the reaction of pupils of human being or animals online based on infrared video measurement technology.Methods The system include: ordinary CCD infrared camera,data acquisition card,physiological signal recorder and basic software for signal acquisition and analysis,synchronous measurement and analysis software of pupil video,and computer,etc.The infrared reflection from eyeball was received by CCD camera and converted to digital signals.The digital video information was acquired by the data acquisition card and then sent into the computer.The core of the system was video analysis software of pupil.By dynamically tracking and analyzing,the gray value difference between pupil and the surrounding area,the total number of pixels and the total area of the pupil were acquired.The Windows RAM transfer mechanism was used as a bridge to communicate data between the signal recording system software and the video analysis software,making the changes of pupil size as quick change digitals in the physiological signal recorder.At the same time,the time-area graph of pupil real-time response was formed.Results The dilation reflex was successfully measured in cats by using of this system.Conclusion Our system solves the challenge of pupil automatic tracking and dynamic measurement,especially the influence of pupil motion to the measurement,depending on simple devices.