Workshop: Opportunities and Challenges in Social Neuroscience

University Of Chicago, Chicago IL

Investigators

Abstract

Humans depend on social structures that range from dyads and families to groups, communities, and cultures. These structures likely evolved hand in hand with the neural, neuroendocrine, cellular, and genetic mechanisms that support them because the consequent social behaviors helped these organisms survive, reproduce, and care for offspring sufficiently long rnough that they too reproduced. Social neuroscience is a field of research that has grown over the past two decades to investigate these neural, neuroendocrine, cellular, and genetic mechanisms and the social structures, factors, and processes with which they interface. This award provides NSF funding for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to attend an upcoming conference on Social Neuroscience that will bring together scientists from the United States, Europe, and Asia, speaking on the topics 1) Imaging, lesion, and behavioral studies of social cognition; 2) Neurobiology of affiliative behavior; 3) Social perception; 4) Neural bases and neuro-embodiment of social processes; and 5) Neural bases of real-time social interactions. The junior investigators funded to attend this conference will be exposed to cutting edge research in social neuroscience and will have their own work showcased during a special poster session. The product of the conference will be an edited volume submitted to MIT Press for the Social Neuroscience Book Series.