Academics
Background
Welcome to the University of Chicago Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience (CCSN). Cognitive and Social Neuroscience represent multi-level scientific perspectives that attempt to go beyond disciplinary boundaries to better understand the complexities of human behavior. Research on cognitive and social neuroscience investigates the neural mechanisms that underlie psychological processes and social behavior. This work can change fundamental ideas and theories in psychology by providing neurophysiological evidence and can inform basic neuroscience research by elucidating psychological functions and behavioral contexts in which neural and molecular mechanisms operate. The emphasis of the Center is interdisciplinary work that cuts across levels of analysis including the economic, social, behavioral, psychological, neural, physiological, cellular molecular, and genetic levels of organization. The focus of the Center is the operation of these mechanisms in the context of a broad range of social functions and dysfunctions.
To achieve this mission, the Center supports specialized research resources (e.g., Cores such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, high density event related brain potentials, electroencephalography, electromyography, autonomic psychophysiology, neuroendocrine and immune assays, biostatistics, patient populations); multidisciplinary collaborative research development through pilot programs; program enrichment through interdisciplinary speaker series, meetings, workshops, conferences, retreats, network activities, and special events; and training through participating doctoral programs, medical rotations and fellowship programs, and M.D./Ph.D. programs, including the outreach to include women and minorities.
For instance, to highlight and encourage research in cognitive and social neuroscience, the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience organizes an annual seminar series to provide a forum for discussing recent research and theories in the field, promote interactions among Center scientists and students, encourage new research collaborations, and facilitate contact with eminent scholars in the cognitive and social neurosciences. Information on speakers in this series is available under the link, "Events."
The Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience Seminar Series works toward these goals in three ways. First, rather than addressing the vast array of questions that fall under the rubric of cognitive and social neuroscience, we focus on neurobiological underpinnings of cognitive and social information processing. Recent work in evolutionary biology and in social neuroscience suggests there may be something special about social cognition. Three distinctions can be drawn: (1) cognitive operations that represent general information processes acting on social stimuli, (2) cognitive operations that evolved from the adaptive value they conferred to social information processing but which have been exapted for general information processes, and (3) cognitive operations that are specific to social stimuli.
Second, too often the treatments of social neuroscience have been limited to the work within a given disciplinary perspective when among the strengths of cognitive and social neurosciences is their multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches. The Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience Seminar Series therefore draws heavily on the work of psychologists, neurologists, sociologists, historians, political scientists, neurobiologists, psychiatrists, radiologists, and physicists, demonstrating how the future of cognitive and social neuroscience lies in the confluence of these perspectives.
Third, a hallmark of cognitive and social neuroscience is the use of multiple methods that bridge disciplines and levels of analysis. Accordingly, the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience Seminar Series draws upon research using multiple methods, including behavioral studies, functional brain imaging techniques, brain lesion patients, comparative analyses, and historical data. The goal of the Seminar Series is to begin to explore a set of common scientific questions that unite cognitive and social neuroscience in understanding mind and behavior.
