Psychology Program Presents
Social Decision-Making Across the Prefrontal and Limbic Regions
4:45 pm EST/GMT-5
How, and why, do we interact with others? What makes us do things like cooperate, be altruistic, or be empathetic toward another individual? How do we dynamically update our social behaviors? The goal of my research is to understand the neurobiology behind these questions. At this talk, I will first present newly published work on studying how the primate amygdala is involved in signaling social decisions. When monkeys make decisions to donate or withhold rewards from another, the neurons in the amygdala mirror the value of rewards delivered to self and other. Furthermore, focal infusion of oxytocin into the amygdala enhances both the frequency of prosocial decisions and attention to recipients when the prosocial tendency is strong. These findings demonstrate both neurophysiological and neuroendocrinological connections between primate amygdala and social decisions. Then, I will introduce a new, highly quantifiable paradigm to assess social gaze dynamics between pairs of rhesus macaques, in which we can model the gaze dynamics as a decay process of sustained attention following mutual eye contact. Dominance and familiarity between the interacting pairs induce separable components of gaze dynamics that are unique to live interactions (compared to viewing pictures or movies of the same conspecifics). These findings endorse the notion that certain key aspects of social cognition are only be captured during interactive social contexts. Overall, these studies will support that reward processing and gaze dynamics actively shape how the brain mediates social interactions.
For more information, call 845-758-7223, or e-mail [email protected].
Time: 4:45 pm EST/GMT-5
Location: Preston Theater