Aubrey Kelly
Emory University, GA·Neuroscience
Many animals, including humans, live in large groups made up mostly of unrelated individuals. Getting along in such groups requires joining new groups, forming positive relationships and keeping the group stable.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Psychology
Biology
- Topics
social neuroscience
group cohesion
prosocial behavior
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2027
What they work on
- Test whether the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus (PVN) suppresses fear circuitry to enable spiny mice to approach unfamiliar individuals and form new groups, using DREADDs to control specific neurons.
- Test whether the PVN engages reward circuits to reinforce friendly behavior and group cohesion, recording neural activity with fiber photometry in spiny mice living in complex groups.
- Combine machine learning and social network analysis of group behavior with neural data to build a dataset linking brain activity to social cohesion in spiny mouse groups.
More about the research
Yet most neuroscience studies look only at pairs of animals, such as mates or parent and offspring, so little is known about how the brain supports life in a crowd.
Why it matters
This basic research reveals how the brain lets individuals join and thrive in social groups. Understanding the brain circuits behind friendly approach and group cohesion could eventually inform how we think about healthy relationships and stable communities, and why some individuals struggle in complex social settings.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Xiaoting Wu
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY·Neuroscience
Identify neuromodulatory inputs to ventral CA1 (vCA1), a hippocampal region, that drive positive social memories, using optogenetics in Cre-driver mice, fiber photometry during social interactions, and conditional deletion of neuromodulators.
Carolyn Parkinson
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Psychology·Early-career
Map the real-world social networks of several bounded communities, then use behavioral and neuroimaging experiments with their members to measure how knowing others' network positions shapes thought, emotion and behavior.
Teresa A Milner
Weill Medical College of Cornell University, NY·Neuroscience
Test whether altered GluA1 signaling in PVN neurons contributes to angiotensin II-induced hypertension in post-AOF mice. GluA1 is part of AMPA glutamate receptors, which relay fast excitatory signals between neurons.
The school
Emory University: 70 labs on PI Pages, $1.2B a year on research, 286 research doctorates a year.
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