Stavros Niarchos Foundation Brain Insight Lecture

How We Perceive Ourselves and Others

There is no shortage of social situations in a place like New York City. Even when inundated by a fast-paced blur of people, we can still pick out a familiar face from a crowd or form immediate impressions about strangers. What are the underlying mechanisms that allow the brain to realize you’ve run into your barista on the subway? How does information from previous social interactions shape the brain’s analysis of new ones? In this event, three experts combine their perspectives across neuroscience, cognitive science, and psychology to explore how we relate to those around us.

Steven A. Siegelbaum, PhD, Gerald D. Fischbach, MD, Professor of Neuroscience and Professor of Pharmacology, Chair, Department of Neuroscience, and Principal Investigator at Columbia University's Zuckerman Institute, will begin our event by discussing the brain mechanisms for social memory – our store of information about our encounters with other individuals. This ability is a key part of social behavior, and it involves the hippocampus, a region of the brain famous for its role in memory. How does the hippocampus encode and process this type of social information? How do changes in hippocampal function contribute to social dysfunction associated with neuropsychiatric disorders? By eavesdropping on specific neurons in the hippocampus of healthy mice and mouse models of psychiatric disorders, Dr. Siegelbaum will discuss how his lab is approaching such questions.

Jon B. Freeman, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychology at Columbia University, will then share his research on the snap judgments that people make about each other during everyday encounters. What characteristics about a person can we extract from seeing their face for less than a second? Perhaps you might learn about which social groups that person is a part of, the emotions they are feeling in that moment, or even their personality traits. How does the brain rapidly sift through this information while recalling knowledge from past experiences? And how can we draw quick, informed conclusions about people without falling into stereotypes?

Following the two talks, Dr. Jennifer Merritt, Postdoctoral Research Scientist in the lab of Dr. Andrés Bendesky at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute, will moderate a discussion and Q&A with the speakers. Audience questions are welcomed, either submitted during registration or live during the event.

About the experts

Steven A. Siegelbaum, PhD, is the Gerald D. Fischbach, MD, Professor of Neuroscience and Professor of Pharmacology; Chair, Department of Neuroscience; and Principal Investigator at Columbia's Zuckerman Institute. His lab studies the neural mechanisms underlying learning and memory. Over the years his lab has described how changes in the electrical signaling properties of neurons contribute to a simple form of learning in invertebrates and to more complex forms of learning in the mammalian brain. Recently, the lab has turned its attention to the neural circuits that mediate social memory, the repository of information about past encounters with other individuals. The lab found that a relatively small subregion of the brain, the CA2 area of the hippocampus, was specialized for this form of memory. Siegelbaum and colleagues are examining the molecular, cellular, and neural circuit mechanisms by which CA2 contributes to social memory, and how alterations in CA2 may contribute to social dysfunction in schizophrenia and other neuropsychiatric disorders. Dr. Siegelbaum is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of the International Union of Physiological Sciences.

Jon B. Freeman, PhD, is Associate Professor of Psychology at Columbia University and director of the Social Cognitive & Neural Sciences Lab. His research examines how people understand the social world through a coordination of visual, social, and affective processes. In particular, his work focuses on the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying person perception, bias and stereotyping, and the real-time dynamics of social and emotional judgments, including the interplay between social cognition and visual perception. He takes an integrative and multi-level approach that makes use of techniques such as functional neuroimaging, computational modeling, and behavioral paradigms. He has also conducted substantial methodological work and developed tools that allow researchers to uncover split-second decision-making through response-directed hand motion. Dr. Freeman is the recipient of a number of awards, including the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the Association for Psychological Science’s Janet T. Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions, and early career awards from the Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences, the Social & Affective Neuroscience Society, the Society for Personality & Social Psychology, the International Social Cognition Network, and the Society for Social Neuroscience.

Jennifer Merritt, PhD, is a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Dr. Andrés Bendesky in the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University. She also holds a PhD in neuroscience and animal behavior from Emory University, where she was advised by Dr. Donna Maney. She studies how the genetic architecture of the nervous system contributes to the evolution of behavior across levels of biological organization, from genes to behavior. In particular, Dr. Merritt investigates how hormones produced in the adrenal gland, such as progestins and corticosteroids, drive changes in affect, social behavior, the immune system, and metabolism. Recently, she discovered a novel cell type in the adrenal gland that contributes to the elevated parental behavior of monogamous deer mice. Dr. Merritt is the recipient of numerous fellowships, including the Simons Society of Fellows Junior Fellowship and Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Predoctoral Fellowship, and early career awards from the Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology, the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, the Center for Translational Social Neuroscience, and Yerkes National Primate Research Center.