Perception of fear induced by others in danger elicits complex vicarious fear responses and
behavioral outputs. In rodents, observing a conspecific receive aversive stimuli leads to
escape and freezing behavior. It remains unclear how these behavioral self-states in
response to others in fear are neurophysiologically represented. Here, we assess such
representations in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), an essential site for empathy,
in an observational fear (OF) paradigm in male mice. We classify the observer mouse's …