Congratulations to Weikang Shi for being selected as a P-SPINE Fellow for a Philadelphia symposium showcasing the best postdoctoral talent in neuroscience!
Congratulations to Weikang Shi for receiving the 2026 Simian Collective (SimCo) Young Investigator Award! He will be giving the award talk at the meeting.
Yale News (July 16, 2026)
“Data Science Fellows program names inaugural cohort”
Congratulations to Katherine Yao on receiving the Peter Salovey and Marta Moret Data Science Fellowship for 2026–2027!
The Transmitter (June 24, 2026)
“Cooperating marmosets extend decision-making model of the brain”
In this collaborative work, we discovered that neurons in the dmPFC accumulate social evidence from a partner via active social gaze to enable successful cooperation.
Yale News (May 27, 2026)
“Monkey see, monkey do: Study sheds light on cooperative decision-making”
In this collaborative work, we discovered that neurons in the dmPFC accumulate social evidence from a partner via active social gaze to enable successful cooperation.
Congratulations to Dr. Megha Chawla for successfully defending her doctoral dissertation (5/2026)!
Congratulations to Ashyah Galbokke Hewage for receiving the Yale Summer Experience Award (SEA) to conduct her summer research! (5/2026)
Congratulations to Akzel Davila for receiving the Yale STEM Summer Fellowship to conduct his summer research investigating strategic social coordination! (4/2026)
Congratulations to Katherine Yao for being accepted to the summer Graduate Study Programme organized by the United Nations in Geneva, “AI and Emerging Technologies: Realities, Risks and Opportunities”!
Congratulations to Weikang Shi for receiving the 2026 Marmoset Bioscience Symposium Young Investigator Award! He will be giving the award talk at the meeting.
Congratulations to Weikang and Kat for receiving the Wu Tsai Institute Travel Award to attend and present their work at the 2025 Society for Neuroscience Meeting (October 15, 2025)!
Congratulations to Guangyao for receiving the Yale Postdoctoral Scholars Travel Award to attend and present his work at the 2025 Society for Neuroscience Meeting (October 9, 2025)!
Yale School of Medicine News (September 4, 2025)
“A New Paradigm for Understanding Social Cognition”
In this collaborative work, we discovered diverse and flexible cooperative strategies in marmosets—some gaze-dependent and others gaze-independent. Their cooperative strategies are also specific to partner identity.
Congratulations to Kat for receiving the Trainee Professional Development Award to attend and present her work at the 2025 Society for Neuroscience Meeting (August 15, 2025)!
The Transmitter – Spectrum News (August 12, 2025)
“Prosocial effects of oxytocin are state dependent; and more”
Huge congratulations, Dr. Olivia Meisner (May 19, 2025)!!
Huge congratulations to Weikang for winning the Best Poster Award at the Larry J. Young Memorial Symposium (May 14, 2025)!
Huge congratulations to Olivia for her successful dissertation defense! Congrats, Dr. Meisner (March 4, 2025)!
A lab outing to the New Haven Escape Room (Nov 21, 2024)
Both teams from the lab made the leaderboard!
Yale News (June 13, 2024)
“New insights into the brain regions involved in paranoia”
In this collaborative work, we discovered that the mediodorsal thalamus plays a causal role in belief volatility, and that disruption of this region leads to the erratic belief volatility commonly found in paranoia.
Yale News (May 31, 2024)
“More than meets the eye: Understanding how the brain controls social gaze”
We discovered that delivering real-time, closed-loop microstimulation to the OFC, triggered by social gaze events, boosts social attention dynamics during real-life social gaze interaction.
An interview piece at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre at UCL on our research: “Gaze and cooperative strategy: interareal interactions in the social brain”
Congratulations to Noor for being selected as a Wu Tsai Institute Undergraduate Fellow! Noor will be working on a cool collaboration project between our lab and the lab of Dr. Jane Taylor, led by Will Li and Henry Kietzman.
Congratulations to Megha for receiving the First Place Award for student posters at the 2024 SPSP Gender Preconference!
Congratulations to Weikang for receiving the 2023 Best Poster Award from the Society for Social Neuroscience (S4SN) (Nov 3, 2023)!
Yale News (July 6, 2023)
“Cravings, queasiness, and vicarious thrills”
Congratulations to Guangyao for being selected to attend the Methods in Neuroscience at Dartmouth (MIND) Computational Summer School (summer 2023)!
Huge congratulations to Siqi for receiving the James B. Grossman Dissertation Prize (Convocation Prize) for an outstanding dissertation (pictured at the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences Convocation Ceremony) (May 22, 2023)! [Departmental news]
Congratulations to Sylvia for being selected to attend the Brains, Minds, and Machines summer program at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in August (May 17, 2023)!
Huge congratulations to Siqi for receiving the travel award to attend and give a talk at the 2023 Japanese Society for Neuroscience Meeting in August 2023 (May 16, 2023)!
Huge congratulations to Siqi for her successful dissertation defense! Congrats, Dr. Fan (May 4, 2023)!
Congratulations to Olivia, whose essay on the biological and psychological implications of social disconnectedness was selected as one of the “Top 100 Essays” for the St. Gallen Symposium Leaders of Tomorrow essay contest (March 17, 2023)!
Congratulations to Olivia for receiving the 2022 Best Poster Award from the Society for Social Neuroscience (S4SN) (Dec 1, 2022)!
Congratulations to Dr. Weikang Shi for receiving the Best Dissertation Award from the Society for Neuroeconomics (SNE) for the work he did before joining the lab (thesis: Causal function and bias correlation of the orbitofrontal cortex in economic choices, from the lab of Camillo Padoa-Schioppa) (Oct 4, 2022)!
Congratulations to Olivia for receiving the 2022 Trainee Professional Development Award from the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) (Sep 9, 2022)!
Congratulations to Olivia for receiving a Keystone Symposia Scholarship to attend and present her research at the Keystone Symposia on Neurocircuitry of Social Behavior this summer (July 5, 2022)!
A theme issue in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B edited by the lab (Putnam and Chang [Eds.], Interplays between oxytocin and other neuromodulators in shaping complex social behaviours) will come out in July 2022!
Yale News (May 10, 2022)
“When eyes meet, neurons start to fire”
Dr. Weikang Shi will be joining the lab as a Wu Tsai Institute Postdoctoral Associate in June 2022! [Yale News]
Congrats to Siqi Fan for receiving the Best Poster Award from the Society for Social Neuroscience (S4SN, 2021)!
Congrats to Siqi Fan and Michael Zhou for receiving the 2021 Trainee Professional Development Award (TPDA) from the Society for Neuroscience (Oct 14, 2021)!
Our lab, together with the Nandy lab and Jadi lab, has successfully obtained a 3-year Wu Tsai Postdoctoral Fellow slot to work on a collaborative and integrative social neuroscience project (June 4, 2021).
Our former postdoc, Dr. Olga Dal Monte, receives the 2021 SANS Innovation Award from the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society for her 2020 research paper (May 3, 2021) [news link]
Yale News (Mar 29, 2021)
“Monkeys experience the visual world the same way people do”
Yale Daily News (April 12, 2021)
“Yale study explores visual consciousness in rhesus monkeys”
Huge congratulations to Olivia Meisner for receiving the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (March 23, 2021)!
Huge congratulations to (now) Dr. Hannah Weinberg-Wolf!! (Feb 4, 2021)
Our former postdoc, Dr. Olga Dal Monte, receives the 2020 Early Career Award from the Society for Social Neuroscience (S4SN) (Jan 14, 2021)
Our former postdoc, Dr. Olga Dal Monte, receives the 2021 Cortex Prize from the Federation of the European Societies of Neuropsychology (Nov 20, 2020)
BrainPost (Mar 3, 2020)
“Distinct patterns of cortico-limbic connectivity underlie social concern for others”
Psychology Today (Feb 24, 2020)
“Neuroscience of generosity”
New Haven Register (Feb 24, 2020)
“Yale study: Why monkeys choose to drink alone”
Yale News (Feb 24, 2020)
“Why monkeys choose to drink alone”
Congratulations to Siqi Fan for receiving the Keystone Symposia Future of Science Fund scholarship to attend and present her work at the Keystone Symposium on Neurocircuitry of Social Behavior this summer.
Congratulations to Megha Chawla for receiving a fellowship to attend and participate in the 2020 Summer Seminar in Neuroscience & Philosophy at Duke University.
Lab dinner in December (2019)
Another fun “Carvin’ at the Punkin Patch” event this Halloween! About 40 adults and kids displayed their Halloween spirit! (2019)
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Congrats to Hannah Weinberg-Wolf for receiving the 2019 Trainee Professional Development Award (TPDA) from the Society for Neuroscience (Aug 30, 2019)!
Congratulations to Dr. Jessica Joiner for her successful PhD defense! (July 8, 2019)
Jessica during the introduction to her public defense, and Daeyeol’s illustration of the perfect technique for opening a bottle of champagne during the post-defense party.
Yale News (June 14, 2019)
“Same brain region weighs decisions made for others as well as for self”
Congratulations to Dr. Matthew Piva! (May 20, 2019)
Matt and I at the graduate school reception after his diploma ceremony. The picture on the right also shows Dr. Stephanie Noble, a long-time friend of the lab.
Congratulations to Siqi Fan for receiving a fellowship to attend the 2019 Kavli Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience (Mar 20, 2019)!
Siqi will travel to Santa Barbara this summer to attend a special workshop on computational approaches to cognitive neuroscience!
Congratulations to the lab for receiving a collaborative Kavli Innovative Research Award (Mar 17, 2019)!
Our lab, Anirvan Nandy’s lab, and Monika Jadi’s lab received a cool collaborative Kavli Innovative Research Award to study complex and dynamic social interactions in marmosets! (link)
Congratulations, Dr. Matthew Piva! (Oct 25, 2018)
Matt successfully defended his PhD and received a Distinction in PhD in Neuroscience from the Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program at Yale.
Congrats to Matt for receiving the SfN Trainee Professional Development Award (Sep 2018)!
Congrats to Hannah Weinberg-Wolf (Oct 7, 2018)!
Hannah was recently awarded the prestigious Wurtele Fellowship from the Yale Art Gallery to enhance her extracurricular passion for teaching art to the public (link).
Congrats to Olga for receiving the COSYNE Travel Award (Jan 2018)!
NIMH Biobehavioral Research Awards for Innovative New Scientists (BRAINS) Awards Ceremony (Nov 13, 2017)
Our grant was among those celebrated during this ceremony (link).
Congrats to Olga for receiving the SfN Trainee Professional Development Award to attend and present her work at the Society for Neuroscience meeting (Sep 2017)!
Yale News (May 1, 2017)
“Combination approach may help combat autism”
Yale News (May 18, 2016)
“Research note: Brain area crucial to ability to assess motives of others”
Yale Scientific Magazine (Apr 5, 2016)
“What makes us generous? The neuroscientist’s take”
Slate (Mar 17, 2016) – most bizarre way to be cited…
“Yale vs. Duke is the most annoying matchup in NCAA tournament history”
Congrats to Olga for receiving the Presidential Travel Award for the Japanese Society for Neuroscience (Feb 2016)!
Daily Mail (Dec 16, 2015)
“Are you a Scrooge? Researchers pinpoint ‘generous’ center of the brain”
VICE Magazine – Motherboard (Dec 15, 2015)
“How your brain determines if you’re a Santa or Scrooge”
Yale News (Dec 15, 2015)
“To give or not to give: Value assessment arises in tiny area of the brain”
Congrats to Olga for receiving the Theresa Seessel Postdoc Fellowship (Dec 2015)!
Congrats to Olga & Matt for receiving the Best Poster Award at the Society for Social Neuroscience (S4SN) meeting (Oct 2015)!
Congrats to Olga & Matt for receiving the Best Poster Award at the Gordon Research Conference on Amygdala (Aug 2015)!
Brain Food: Event series to showcase neuroscience at Yale (April 23, 2015)
New York Times & Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (Feb 23, 2015)
“2015 Sloan Research Fellows” (NYTimes announcement)
“2015 Sloan Research Fellows” (Sloan)
Congrats to Olga & Wes for each receiving the Postdoctoral Scholar Travel Fund from Yale (June 2015)!
Congrats to Matt for receiving the Predoctoral NSERC Fellowship (Mar 2015)!
Skeptically Speaking (Mar 1, 2013)
“The altruism equation”
NBC News (Dec 28, 2012)
“Scientists identify unselfish brain cells in monkeys”
Nature Asia Highlights (Dec 24, 2012)
“Social rewards in the brain”
Nature News (Dec 23, 2012)
“Monkey brain area keeps count of kindnesses”
National Geographic (Dec 23, 2012)
“Generosity and the social brain, one neuron at a time”
Scientific American (Dec 26, 2012)
“Monkey brain area keeps count of kindnesses”
EurekAlert! (Dec 23, 2012)
“Decision to give a group effort in the brain”
Society for Neuroscience Press Room: The Social Brain (Oct 16, 2012)
“New Findings Illuminate Basis in Brain for Social Decisions, Reactions”
Biological Psychiatry (July 24, 2012)
“Classifying Neural Circuit Dysfunctions Using Neuroeconomics”
National Geographic, Daily News (Jan 9, 2012)
“Exposure to ‘Love Hormone’ Increases Prosocial Behavior in Monkeys”
US News (HealthDay) (Jan 10, 2012)
“Monkeys Treated With ‘Love Hormone’ Show More Kindness”
Science News (April 7, 2012)
“Furry Friends Forever” (on the evolution and benefits of friendship) (article PDF)
EurekAlert! (AAAS) (Jan 5, 2012)
“Whiff of ‘love hormone’ helps monkeys show a little kindness”
AAAS Science Update Radio Snippet (Jan 25, 2012)
“Kinder, Gentler Monkeys”
ABC News (Jan 11, 2012)
“A Love Drug? Oxytocin Hormone Makes Mothers Kinder”