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Reposted by Weizhe Hong

UCLA Neuroscience Theme @uclaneurotheme.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Why do we help strangers in distress? A UCLA study finds the brain circuit for parenting and prosocial helping are the same. The neural systems that evolved to care for offspring may be the foundation of #empathy itself. 🧠 #https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10327-8 #psychology #behavior

Single neurons extracted in an example lens field of view in the MPOA. Regions of interest (ROIs) are pseudo-coloured to visually distinguish individual neurons in one animal.

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Nicole Rust @nicolecrust.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

You know when you’re at a conference and you can just feel the entire room get increasingly excited as a talk moves along? @honglab.bsky.social just gave on of those. WOW! The neuroscience of prosocial behavior: from helping and cooperation to social AI

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Weizhe Hong @honglab.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Wow—thank you so much! I hadn’t logged into Bluesky for a little while, so it was wonderful to come back and see this. I’m delighted that you enjoyed the talk, and I really enjoyed your inspiring talk too. The conference was fantastic, and it was a pleasure to share our work.

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Society for Social Neuroscience (S4SN) @s4sn.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

Symposium submissions are due tomorrow, March 31, 2026!

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Weizhe Hong @honglab.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

Interestingly, silencing the activity of this region selectively reduced active decisions in targeted mice but elicited compensatory increases in non-manipulated partners, preserving overall group-level huddle time.

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Weizhe Hong @honglab.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

At the neural level, we found that the prefrontal cortex tracks not just an individual's own choices, but also those made by its social partners, suggesting the brain continuously models others to enable coordinated group behavior.

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Weizhe Hong @honglab.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

Inspired by penguins huddling in the Antarctic🐧🐧🐧, we studied how groups of mice huddle together for warmth in the cold. We found that mice self-organize into huddles and form dynamic groups under cold stress. Fantastic work led by @tararaam.bsky.social.

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Weizhe Hong @honglab.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

We often think of survival as an individual act. But when facing hardship together, social groups may function more like a unified system than a collection of separate individuals. We are excited to share our latest work @natneuro.nature.com studying collective social dynamics. See: rdcu.be/e8LrV

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Society for Social Neuroscience (S4SN) @s4sn.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

Symposium Proposal Deadline Extended! 2026 Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Neuroscience (S4SN 2026) will take place in Montréal, Canada, August 23–26, 2026. 🧠 The deadline for symposium proposals has been extended to Tuesday, March 31. Learn more: s4sn.org/s4sn2026

Weizhe Hong @honglab.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

We find that specific neurons in the medial preoptic area that regulate parenting are also critical for comforting behavior toward adults. This suggests that neural systems evolved for offspring care may have provided a scaffold for broader prosocial support between adults.

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Weizhe Hong @honglab.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

While prosocial helping behavior is hypothesized to have an evolutionary root in caring for vulnerable newborn offspring, whether the neural substrates underlying parenting may contribute to adult-directed prosocial helping behaviors remains largely unclear.

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Weizhe Hong @honglab.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

Excited to share our latest work in @nature.com showing shared neural substrates for parenting and prosocial helping behavior. Full text available here: rdcu.be/e6PnY

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Weizhe Hong @honglab.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

Join us in beautiful Montreal for the 2026 S4SN Conference (Aug 23–26)! Share your latest research, spark new collaborations, and engage with a vibrant social neuroscience community! Symposium proposals and individual abstract submissions are underway: event.fourwaves.com/s4sn2026/pages

event.fourwaves.com

S4SN 2026

Join S4SN 2026, August 23-26, 2026. Learn more on Fourwaves.

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Monique Smith @moeneuro.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

Great symposium today with @honglab.bsky.social Andreas Olsson and Grit Hein on empathy across species at @s4sn.bsky.social in Lisbon! #s4sn2025

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Society for Social Neuroscience (S4SN) @s4sn.bsky.social · 23/08/2025

✨ Exciting news for our upcoming S4SN Lisbon meeting! ✨ Join us from September 23-26 for a dynamic program filled with inspiring talks, poster presentations, and networking opportunities. Get ready to connect, learn, and share ideas in the beautiful city of Lisbon! The program is out 😍

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Weizhe Hong @honglab.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

Our findings suggest that shared neural dynamics represent a fundamental and generalizable feature of interacting neural systems present in both biological and artificial agents and highlight the functional significance of shared neural dynamics in driving social interactions.

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Weizhe Hong @honglab.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

Social interaction can be viewed as a dynamic feedback loop between interacting individuals as they act and react to one another. To understand the neural basis of these interactions, we investigated inter-brain neural dynamics across individuals in both biological brains and AI systems.

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Weizhe Hong @honglab.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

Thrilled to share our latest work in @nature.com studying inter-brain neural dynamics in both biological and artificial intelligence systems — amazing work by @nobrainxz.bsky.social and Nguyen Phi, and fantastic collaboration with Jonathan Kao! Read the full article here: rdcu.be/euu5Z

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