ERC Advanced Grant of €2.5 million awarded to Christian Keysers

Neuroscientist Christian Keysers, leader of the “comparative social neuroscience” research group at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience and professor for social neuroscience at the University of Amsterdam, has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant of €2.5 million for HarmAversion. The project investigates the brain mechanisms that make us avoid actions that cause pain or harm to others.

What will you investigate?

“The broad question of my research group is how the state of other individuals influence our decisions, something that is central to empathy. In this grant, we focus on one specific way in which this occurs: when you realise that your actions hurt someone else, your brain discourages those actions.

We want to understand exactly how this works, in rats and mice, and how these mechanisms relate to what we see in humans. Previous work has shown which brain regions become active when animals or humans witness the pain of others, or when their own actions harm someone else. But the causal chain — which brain regions are truly necessary, and what computations they perform — is still unclear.”

How will you study this?

“We use an animal model that we developed in rats and mice. In this setup, animals can press two levers. Both levers give them a reward, such as a bit of sweet milk. The animals quickly develop a preference for one of the two levers.

Once that preference is clear, pressing the preferred lever is linked to a mild but unpleasant footshock delivered to another animal. The first mouse or rat can see the other animal jump in response, and can also hear the sounds associated with that reaction.

We have already shown that most animals then switch away from their preferred lever to the other lever, even when this is less beneficial for themselves. This is not simply empathy, but a form of prosocial motivation: the pain or distress of another individual changes the animal’s own choices.

The goal now is to uncover the neural mechanisms through which the pain of another individual influences one’s own decisions. To do this, we can intervene in the brain by temporarily silence specific brain regions: by shining light or administering a specific compound, we can localy and temporarily reduce the activity of the neurons in these regions.

We will also use advanced computational models, ultrasound brain imaging, and Neuropixels — electrodes that can measure the activity of hundreds of neurons at the same time. This allows us to ask not only which brain regions are involved, but also what computations they perform when an animal learns that its own action harms another.”

Why is this research important?

“One of the most damaging mental health problems is psychopathy. People with strong psychopathic traits can cause considerable harm, partly because the automatic brake that normally discourages harming others appears to be weaker. This does not mean that they can never respond empathically; rather, the problem is that the pain of another person less automatically restrains their own goal-directed behaviour.

We do not yet understand why this happens. This research will, of course, not immediately lead to therapies or drugs, but it can lead to a better understanding of the brain mechanisms that may go astray in psychopathy and antisocial behaviour.

Harm aversion is also biologically fascinating. When animals live in groups, they must compete with others for food, space, and mates, but they must also avoid severely harming one another. A brain that takes harm to others into account when making decisions may therefore have been critical for the emergence and stability of social groups.”

The ERC Advanced Grant

The ERC Advanced Grant is awarded by the European Research Council of the European Union. It is a research grant across all scientific fields, awarded to individual researchers with a proven track record.

Duration: 5 years
Amount: €2.5 million, intended for three postdocs and a lab manager.