SBL Projects

The Social Brain Lab strives to be a highly collaborative research team and is fortunate to work with a number of interdisciplinary collaborators and projects. Below you will find some of our current projects. 

HelpUS-ERC Project 

The HelpUS-ERC project, in collaboration with David Maresca, Rick Waasdorp, and Eleonora Muñoz-Ibarra from the Maresca lab at TU Delft, Baptiste Heiles from Cal Tech, and Nathan Evans from the University of Liverpool, aims at validating focused ultrasound as an effective non-invasive tool for deep brain stimulation as a means for causal investigation of empathy related to brain processes involved in moral decision making. Funded through the ERC grant, this project involves PhD candidates Flora Nelissen and Judit Campdepadros. This project bridges neuroscience with psychological and economic concepts such as sociality and harm aversion during cost-benefit analyses through an interdisciplinary approach involving computational modelling and new technological advancements.

Through this project, we investigated how the brain attributes value to outcomes of morally conflicting actions. In one study involved with this project, an economic game was developed where participants had to learn which symbol was associated with a monetary reward for themselves at the expense of pain to another person. A computational reinforcement learning model was developed to reliably measure individual differences in participant’s indifference point; the point at which the value of personal monetary gain and pain of another are comparable. Our findings suggest that others’ pain may play a unique role compared to other aversive stimuli in decision making.

In rodents, we successfully developed a transcranial focused ultrasound transducer in-house as a new non-invasive, neuro-stimulation method to selectively target deep brain regions involved in affective empathy to causally test the link with altruistic or antisocial behavior. Our ultrasound set-up is a novel, open-source system with an adaptable framework, making it ideal for ultrasound imaging and stimulation with the possibility to simultaneously record psycho-physiological measures, allowing for future investigation on brain-body interactions during emotional contagion, decision making, and harm aversion.

fUSI Project 

The fUSI project, in collaboration with David Maresca, Rick Waasdorp, and Eleonora Muñoz-Ibarra from the Maresca lab, and Baptiste Heiles from Cal Tech, seeks to investigate the neural correlates of emotional contagion using functional ultrasound imaging (fUSI). This project involves postdoc Chaoyi Qin and PhD researchers Flora Nelissen and Qingying Li. This research is being conducted in 3 parts: (1) developing the method using visual stimuli and tail shocks, (2) performing the real emotional contagion experiments using fUSI, and (3) comparing the brain results with c-fos staining. Starting in 2017, the fUSI project is funded by the HelpUS ERC Grant.

Click Here to learn more about the Maresca Lab.

US Transparent Electrodes (DBI2) 

Beginning in 2024, the US Transparent Electrodes project, in collaboration with Vasiliki Giagka, Raphael Panskus, and Christos Pavlou from the Giagka lab at TU Delft, aims to validate the effectiveness of ultrasound (US) transparent electrodes. This project, involving postdoc Chaoyi Qin and PhD researcher Qingying Li is funded through the HelpUS ERC grant.

Click Here to learn more about the work of Vasiliki Giagka.

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

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

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.

Jahanshahi Group 

In a collaborative effort with Valeria Gazzola, Dr. Ali Jahanshahi’s research at SBL, alongside his PhD student Judy Kesebi, focuses on advancing treatments for Parkinson’s Disease (PD) using innovative technologies such as focused ultrasound (FUS) and nanotechnology. Jahanashahi’s project aims to improve symptom management through non-invasive neuromodulation techniques and address the underlying causes of PD by targeting proteinopathies with precise therapeutic delivery across the blood-brain barrier. This pioneering work promises more effective and less invasive therapies, enhancing the quality of life for PD patients.

Click Here to learn more about Dr. Ali Jahanshahi’s work. 

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