Topic: Social brain

Neuromodulation of Circuit Plasticity: From Adaptive Behavior to Precision Therapeutics

Kuan Hong Wang examines how dopaminergic, cannabinoid, and neuroimmune signaling regulate circuit plasticity across development, experience, and disease, and how cross-species work may inform selective therapies.

Towards Biologically Informed Subgroups Across Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Jason Lerch presents a translational neuroimaging analysis spanning mouse models and human MRI cohorts to identify biologically informed subgroups across autism and related neurodevelopmental conditions.

Building a Brain, One Cell at a Time: Reading the Developmental Instructions Behind Human Neural Diversity

Tom Nowakowski explains lineage barcoding and single-cell sequencing approaches for reconstructing neural stem-cell family trees and early wiring programs in developing mouse and human brains.

Changing Perspectives on Self Control

Yuko Munakata presents evidence challenging capacity-only accounts of self-control and explains how experience, effort, and expected payoff shape executive-function engagement and later outcomes.

The Social Brain: From Models to Mental Health

Given the complex and dynamic nature of our social relationships, the human brain needs to quickly learn and adapt to new social situations. The breakdown of any of these computations could lead to social deficits, as observed in many psychiatric disorders. In this talk, I will present our recent neurocomputational and intracranial work that attempts to model both 1) how humans dynamically adapt beliefs about other people and 2) how individuals can exert influence over social others through model-based forward thinking. Lastly, I will present our findings of how impaired social computations might manifest in different disorders such as addiction, delusion, and autism. Taken together, these findings reveal the dynamic and proactive nature of human interactions as well as the clinical significance of these high-order social processes.

(Dys)regulation of the social brain

RNA-protein complexes in the (dys)regulation of the social brain

Development of the social brain in adolescence and effects of social distancing

Adolescence is a period of life characterised by heightened sensitivity to social stimuli, an increased need for peer interaction and peer acceptance, and development of the social brain. Lockdown and social distancing measures intended to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 are reducing the opportunity to engage in face-to-face social interaction with peers. The consequences of social distancing on human social brain and social cognitive development are unknown, but animal research has shown that social deprivation and isolation have unique effects on brain and behaviour in adolescence compared with other stages of life. It is possible that social distancing might have a disproportionate effect on an age group for whom peer interaction is a vital aspect of development.