| Affiliations |
| Associate Professor, Biological Chemistry, Neurobiology |
| Member, Bioinformatics GPB Home Area, Gene Regulation GPB Home Area, Molecular, Cellular & Integrative Physiology GPB Home Area, Neuroscience GPB Home Area |
Social interactions between individuals and among groups are a hallmark of human society and are critical to the physical and mental health of a wide variety of species including humans. The central goal of our lab is to study the fundamental principles of how social behavior is regulated in the brain. We study how neural circuits and the underlying computation regulate social behavioral decisions within a single brain as well as how emergent inter-brain neural properties arise from social interactions between individuals. We take a multi-disciplinary approach and uses a variety of experimental and computational technologies across molecular, circuit, and behavioral levels.
1. Neural circuits of social information processing and social behavioral decisions
Social interactions involve active detection of various social cues and selection of appropriate decisions. We are interested in studying how social sensory information is processed and integrated in the brain and how different social behavioral decisions are selected and modulated by neural circuits.
Review:
Chen & Hong. Neural circuit mechanisms of social behavior. Neuron 2018.
Social reward and social motivation
Hu et al. An amygdala-to-hypothalamus circuit for social reward
Nature Neuroscience 2021
Representation of social information in the brain
Kingsbury et al. Cortical representations of conspecific sex shape social behavior Neuron 2020
Sexually dimorphic control of social behavior
Chen et al. Sexually dimorphic control of parenting behavior by the medial amygdala. Cell 2019
Neural mechanisms of aggressive behavior
Hong et al. Antagonistic control of social versus repetitive self-grooming behaviors by separable amygdala neuronal subsets. Cell 2014
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2. Neural basis of prosocial behavior
The ability to behave in ways that benefit other individuals’ well-being is among the most celebrated human characteristics crucial for social cohesiveness. Across mammalian species, animals display various forms of prosocial behaviors – comforting, helping, and resource sharing – to support others’ emotions, goals, and/or material needs. We are interested in understanding how animals display different forms of prosocial behavior and how these behaviors are regulated by neural circuits in the brain. |
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3. A multi-brain framework for social interaction
Social interaction can be seen as a dynamic feedback loop that couples two or more high-dimension neural networks (i.e. brains). This feedback loop dynamically shapes behavior, shared cognitive states, and social relationships across individual agents. A fuller understanding of the social brain requires a description of how the neural dynamics are coupled across brains and how they coevolve over time. We study social decisions and emergent inter-brain neural properties in a multi-brain framework that considers social interaction as an integrated network of neural systems.
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4. Molecular and behavioral tools for studying social behavior
Act-seq: a single-cell sequencing approach to identify active neuronal populations |
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Social interactions between individuals and among groups are a hallmark of human society as we know it and are critical to the physical and mental health of a wide variety of species including humans. Impairment of social function is a prominent feature of many neuropsychiatric disorders such as autism spectrum disorders and schizophrenia. Nonetheless, many fundamental questions regarding the neural mechanisms underlying social behavior remain unanswered.
The central goal of our laboratory is to study general principles of how social behavior is regulated in the brain. The Hong lab takes a multi-disciplinary approach and uses a variety of experimental and computational technologies across molecular, circuit, and behavioral levels. We study how neural dynamics regulate social behavioral decisions within a single brain as well as how emergent inter-brain neural properties arise from social interactions between individuals.