Social Interaction
UC Davis is internationally-recognized for strengths in social and personality psychology, developmental psychology and psychobiology aimed at understanding and improving social bonding and well-being through developing new approaches to treat and/or promote the genetic, societal and environmental factors that contribute to optimal social interaction. Anchored by the Department of Psychology, the Center for Mind and Brain and the MIND Institute and supported by basic and translational research in our other member departments and centers, our goal is to develop innovative educational, interventional and policy approaches to mitigate factors like early life adversity (e.g., trauma, poverty, abuse and neglect) and address the increasing effect of social media on socio-emotional development and well-being in children and adults. Advances in these areas will also facilitate development of brain-based communication technologies to overcome language disorders and improve human-machine interaction. Research in this area is supported by 22 faculty members from 8 departments and 8 centers. Research among our faculty on this topic spans model systems from rodents to humans and ranges across all levels of neuroscience research.
Faculty studying social interaction
| David G. Amaral, Ph.D. | Systems Neuroscience and Studies of Autism Spectrum Disorder |
| Paul Ashwood, Ph.D. | Neuroimmune effects on mental health |
| Karen L. Bales, Ph.D. | Behavioral neuroscience of social bonds |
| Melissa D. Bauman, Ph.D. | Behavioral neuroscience, prenatal risk factors for neurodevelopmental disorders |
| Eliza Bliss-Moreau, Ph.D. | Affective neuroscience |
| Lindsay C. Bowman, Ph.D. | Cognitive and environmental factors that influence development of the social brain |
| Jacqueline Crawley, Ph.D. | Behavioral neuroscience and neurodevelopmental disorders |
| Megan Dennis, Ph.D. | Human genetics and genomics, Zebrafish to test human neural genes |
| Diasynou Fioravante, Ph.D. | Neural circuits for prediction, learning and memory |
| Amanda E.Guyer, Ph.D. | Adolescent neurodevelopment in health and depression, anxiety, and substance use |
| Paul Hastings, Ph.D. | Development of physiological, social and emotional functioning from early childhood into adulthood |
| Richard Huskey, Ph.D. | Cognitive control, decision-making and reward, neuroimaging, computational and behavioral modeling |
| Kristin Lagattuta, Ph.D. | Age-related changes and individual differences in emotion understanding, theory of mind, moral cognition, and past-to-future reasoning |
| A. Kimberley McAllister, Ph.D. | Synapse formation and plasticity; neuroimmune contributions to development and disease |
| Yuko Munakata, Ph.D. | Cognitive control over thoughts and actions, influences, consequences and mechanisms |
| Jeffrey Sherman, Ph.D. | Cognitive processes underlying social psychology and behavior; stereotyping and prejudice |
| Jill L. Silverman, Ph.D. | Curative, precision strategies for single gene caused neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs), intellectual disabilities and pediatric epilepsies |
| Marjorie Solomon, Ph.D., M.B.A. | Cognitive neuroscience and autism specturm disorders |
| Danielle S. Stolzenberg, Ph.D. | Genetic and epigenetic mechanisms inexperience-dependent changes in caregiving behavior |
| Lin Tian, Ph.D. | Tool development for analyzing and engineering functional neural circuits; Molecular mechanisms of neurological disorders |
| Brian Trainor, Ph.D. | Effects of stress on the brain and behavior; mood and anxiety disorders |
| Jennifer L. Whistler, Ph.D. | Effects of clinically important drugs and drugs of abuse on the brain |