Early life adversity enhances prosocial helping towards a cagemate and reshapes brain-wide neural activity and network organization

Maternal separation in adult male and female rats is linked to more consistent prosocial helping, with shorter average latencies to help, and increased social play after release.

• Why it matters: Early life adversity is associated with altered social behavior and emotional regulation, but its effects on empathy-related prosocial helping and the neural circuitry supporting it remain unclear.
• What they did: Adult rats reared under maternal separation or control conditions were tested in a helping task to release a trapped cagemate, with behavior tracked across repeated sessions and brain-wide c-Fos measured on the final test day.
• The result: Maternal separation increased c-Fos expression across multiple brain regions and reshaped functional connectivity, including heightened connectivity in stress-related lateral habenula, linking ELA to widespread neural and network changes supporting prosocial behavior.