We find that specific neurons in the medial preoptic area that regulate parenting are also critical for comforting behavior toward adults. This suggests that neural systems evolved for offspring care may have provided a scaffold for broader prosocial support between adults.
While prosocial helping behavior is hypothesized to have an evolutionary root in caring for vulnerable newborn offspring, whether the neural substrates underlying parenting may contribute to adult-directed prosocial helping behaviors remains largely unclear.
Excited to share our latest work in @nature.com showing shared neural substrates for parenting and prosocial helping behavior. Full text available here: rdcu.be/e6PnY
Join us in beautiful Montreal for the 2026 S4SN Conference (Aug 23–26)!
Share your latest research, spark new collaborations, and engage with a vibrant social neuroscience community!
Symposium proposals and individual abstract submissions are underway: event.fourwaves.com/s4sn2026/pages
Great symposium today with @honglab.bsky.social Andreas Olsson and Grit Hein on empathy across species at @s4sn.bsky.social in Lisbon! #s4sn2025
✨ Exciting news for our upcoming S4SN Lisbon meeting! ✨
Join us from September 23-26 for a dynamic program filled with inspiring talks, poster presentations, and networking opportunities. Get ready to connect, learn, and share ideas in the beautiful city of Lisbon!
The program is out 😍
Our findings suggest that shared neural dynamics represent a fundamental and generalizable feature of interacting neural systems present in both biological and artificial agents and highlight the functional significance of shared neural dynamics in driving social interactions.
Social interaction can be viewed as a dynamic feedback loop between interacting individuals as they act and react to one another. To understand the neural basis of these interactions, we investigated inter-brain neural dynamics across individuals in both biological brains and AI systems.
Thrilled to share our latest work in @nature.com studying inter-brain neural dynamics in both biological and artificial intelligence systems — amazing work by @nobrainxz.bsky.social and Nguyen Phi, and fantastic collaboration with Jonathan Kao! Read the full article here: rdcu.be/euu5Z
