Keysers Projects

The Keysers group, part of the Social Brain Lab, is fortunate to be involved in a variety of projects working with prominent researchers from a multitude of scientific disciplines. Below you will find some of our current projects. 

SoMeMe: Brain-wide dynamics for socially-mediated memory acquisition 

In collaboration with Dr. Francesco Battaglia from the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behavior, the SoMeMe project aims to unravel the neural mechanisms of how we learn from the experiences of others, which is a key component of cultural transmission. The project, involving postdocs Frederic Michon,  Chaoyi Qin, Lena Kaufmann, and Akos Babiczky, along with PhD student Lina Asperl, will investigate how the brain integrates social information with spatial memories that form a cognitive map of the environment. The project will use a combination of cutting-edge techniques, such as behavioral models, circuit mapping, engram identification and modulation, and cross-species imaging in rodents and humans. The project will run for five years, from 2023 to 2027, and is funded by the NWO Open Competition ENW-XL program.

Click Here to learn more about the SoMeME project

Growing Up Together in Society (GUTS)

 Growing Up Together in Society is a collaboration of researchers from seven universities and the NIN across a wide variety of disciplines that aim to understand how young people grow up in a complex society. The effort is funded by a €22M Gravitation Grant. Within our lab, Francesca Ayres Ribeiro is exploring how empathy is associated with your position within a social network. She follows young adults in a longitudinal fashion across several years to explore how their individual characteristics influence whom they become closer to, and vice versa, how the people they get closer to influence them. This effort is in close collaboration with Anouk van Zwieten within the SBL who investigates how empathy influences outcomes in children at risk for antisocial behavior. Outside of the SBL, this project is in close collaboration with Berna Güroğlu, Anna van Duijvenvoorde, and Simone Dobbelaar of Leiden University, and René Veenstra and Gert Stulp of the University of Groningen.

Click Here to learn more about social networks within GUTS

Learning Danger from Observing Others’ Misfortunes in my Hippocampus

Frederic Michon, supported by the prestigious NWO Veni grant, is investigating how our brains learn from observing others in potentially hazardous situations, focusing on how this social learning process is encoded in memory. From the Social Brain Lab, his project is supported by Postdoc Lena Kaufmann and PhD researcher Lina Asperl. By combining insights from rodent studies with human research, Michon will explore the role of the hippocampus—a critical brain region involved in memory and emotion processing. Collaborations with Marijke Achterberg from Utrecht University and Federico Stella from the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition at Radboud University further enhance this research.

Click Here to learn more about Frederic Michon’s project

Sanford Project 

The Sanford project, in collaboration with Monique Smith from the Smith Lab at the Sanford Center for Empathy and Compassion UC San Diego, aims to develop markers of emotional contagion through investigating vicarious pain in humans and rodents. Funded by the Sanford Award from the Sanford Center for Empathy and Compassion, this parallel study involves postdoc Rajeev Rajendran and research assistants Monia Cariola and Baptiste Maheo. 

Click Here to learn more about the Smith Lab.