OMSI Science Pub Eugene: Social Neuroscience

A Brief Tour of the Social Brain

With Rob Chavez, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychology and director of the Computational Social Neuroscience Lab at the University of Oregon

July 11, 2019 | 6:30-8:30PM; Doors open @ 5PM | $5 Suggested Donation
 

Human beings are a fundamentally social species, and our relationships with one another are among the most cherished aspects of our lives. The capacity to perceive, evaluate, and understand people in our social environment is made possible by the extraordinary complexity of the human brain. How much do we know about the brain’s capacity to uphold some of these most defining characteristics of our species?

In this talk, professor Rob Chavez of the University of Oregon will give an overview of what the field of Social Neuroscience has uncovered about the ways in which the brain represents information about ourselves, other people, and the richness of our emotions and mental lives. Drawing on work using human neuroimaging, he will show how these psychological phenomena are supported by distributed yet highly connected regions across the brain.

Rob is an Assistant Professor of Psychology and director of the Computational Social Neuroscience Lab at the University of Oregon. He completed his Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience at Dartmouth College and Bachelor of Science in psychology at the University of New Mexico. Prior to coming to University of Oregon in 2017, he worked as a postdoctoral scholar at Ohio State University. His research uses a combination of multimodal neuroimaging and machine learning methods to describe how our brains build representations of our sense of self and the social environment and how we use these representations to guide our behavior in the real world.

Science Pub Eugene is a monthly event that is open to anyone and everyone. No RSVP or scientific background required. Just bring your curiosity, sense of humor, and appetite for food, drinks, and knowledge! For more information or to sign up for our mailing list, email: sciencepub@omsi.edu.