Neuronal underpinnings of naturalistic social behavior across animal species

Social interactions are highly dynamic, requiring individuals to understand not only how their behavior may affect others, but also how others may respond in return. In humans, social interactions are also often dominated by processes such as language and theory of mind that allow us to communicate complex thoughts and beliefs. Understanding the basic neural processes that underlie social behavior or communication, however, has remained a challenge. Here, we develop naturalistic approaches in animals and humans to begin investigating these questions at cellular scale. First, by developing an ethologically based group task in rhesus macaques, we study the detailed representations of others’ behavior by prefrontal neurons, how they collectively represent the interaction between specific group members, and how they enable mutually beneficial social behavior. Second, by recording from neurons in the human prefrontal cortex during language-based tasks, we identify neurons that reliably encode information about others’ beliefs across richly varying scenarios. Finally, we examine how different cells in humans track linguistic information during natural speech processing and how language can be used to ask specific questions about the neuronal constructs that underlie social behavior. Together, these studies highlight the prospective use of naturalistic approaches in social neuroscience.

Speaker Bio: Ziv Williams MD is Associate Professor in Neurosurgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Faculty at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, and Faculty at the Program in Neuroscience at Harvard Medical School. He earned his MD degree from Stanford University and completed his residency training in Neurosurgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital. His primary focus has been on the treatment of neurodegenerative, cognitive, and psychological disorders through investigation in humans, non-human primates, and rodents. He employs a broad range of study approaches in lab and in clinical settings that include ultrahigh resolution single-neuronal recordings, closed-loop modulation, brain-machine interface development, deep neural network modeling, cell-type specific gene manipulation, chemogenetics, optogenetics, and wireless techniques. He has been broadly involved in clinical trials and is clinical co-investigator in the BrainGate program. He is also dedicated to resident education and has committed significant time to teaching at the Harvard-MIT medical school program and to co-directing the NIH R25 Research Education Program at MGH.