At UCLA’s Social Neuroscience Laboratory, we study the fundamental neural mechanisms that drive social behavior in both biological systems and artificial intelligence, with a particular emphasis on empathy, prosociality, and cooperation.
Prosocial behavior—actions that benefit others—represents one of the most evolutionarily puzzling yet critically important aspects of social life. Unlike other behaviors that primarily serve direct self-interest, prosocial behaviors appear to contradict basic evolutionary principles by directing effort and resources toward helping others, often at one’s own cost. This paradox makes prosocial behavior both fascinating from a scientific perspective and profoundly understudied compared to self-serving behaviors.
Using a multidisciplinary approach that integrates behavioral paradigms with genetic, circuit-level, and computational tools, we demonstrate that mice exhibit multiple forms of prosocial behaviors, including comforting, targeted helping, rescue-like behavior, and cooperation. Using these behavioral models, we identify key neural pathways in the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex that specifically encode and control these behaviors. In addition to mechanisms within a single brain, we demonstrate that animals exhibit inter-brain neural correlations between interacting individuals.
Beyond biological systems, our research extends to understanding emergent social behaviors among artificial intelligence systems, identifying fundamental, generalizable features of interacting neural systems present in both biological and artificial agents.
Main research areas:
- The neuroscience of empathy, compassion, and prosocial behavior
- Neural dynamics across interacting individuals
- Social interaction in artificial intelligence
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).