Dispatches from a Reductionist World

Scientists are investigating the genetic basis for empathy by using a particularly social breed of mice. Money quote: "We are basically trying to deconstruct empathy into smaller functional units that make it more accessible to biological research... We think that by coming up with a simplified model of it in a mouse, we're probably getting closer to modeling symptoms of human disorders."

(The experiment revolves around pavlovian conditioning by proxy - an empathic animal, such as certain sociable mouse strains, can form negative associations not by being tormented themselves, but by being exposed to the squeals of distress of other mice have unpleasurable things done to them. The curious thing is that less sociable mice do not display this elementary common sense - something that makes me doubt to what degree this counts as "empathy", as I suspect most human sociopaths are also capable of treating cries of distress as a possible warning. But then, I'm not the one abusing innocent mice; maybe I'd recognise their behaviour as empathic if I witnessed it.)