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. 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.
Research highlights:
- The neuroscience of empathy, compassion, and prosocial behavior
- Relationship between the social brain and emotions
- Neural mechanism of social information processing and social decision-making
To learn more about our work, please visit here.
We are actively seeking highly motivated postdocs and graduate students to join our team (see more details).