New Research Group to Focus on "Positive" Human Behavior

CBN Members Receive SFN Next Generation Award

December 2009 -- New Research Group to Focus on "Positive" Human Behaviors

Surprise box office hit “The Blind Side” depicts the true story of Michael Oher, a homeless African-American youngster from a broken home that is taken in by the Touhy family for no other reason than to help him reach his full potential. Today, Oher is a pro football player for the NFL's Baltimore Ravens.

It is this type of altruistic behavior, shown by the Tuohy family, that is the topic of a new research endeavor at the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience.

With support from a Templeton Foundation planning grant, several members of the CBN are developing research ideas to investigate the fundamental neuroscience of positive emotions and social traits such as social bonding, tolerance, trust, altruism, cooperation, empathy and hope.

“While the study of positive emotions has now become a vibrant component of several areas of social science, far less work has been done on the fundamental neural processes related to positive emotional and social states,” said CBN Director, Elliott Albers, Ph.D. “The CBN wishes to build complementary work in neuroscience in this area by stimulating new advances in basic neuroscience research focused on social bonding.”

The study of positive emotions has been defined as a fairly new branch of psychology that “studies the strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive.” These strengths and virtues have been labeled with terms such as prosocial behavior, altruism and social bonding. Prosocial behavior has been defined as “caring about the welfare and rights of others, feeling concern and empathy for others, and acting in ways that benefit others,” such as how Leigh Anne Tuohy helped Oher in the movie. 

The overarching question addressed in the research is how prosocial behaviors came to exist in a world where individuals compete for the essentials to live and survive. The ultimate goal of the Center's research program is to understand the neural bases of prosocial behaviors and how such behaviors arose in the human species.

To reach their goal, CBN collaborators will conduct in-depth research on the hypothesis that neural mechanisms promoting the mother-infant bond, which is well-developed in the mammalian species, is the foundation for the evolution of social processes including empathy, cooperation and social bonding. 

CBN scientists from this group also propose that many of the processes underlying empathy in humans are manifest in parental behaviors, therefore suggesting the degree to which appropriate parental behaviors are observed in an individual may correlate with the degree of empathetic response.

The research will focus on five basic neurobiological areas or systems to evaluate these hypotheses, including cognition, emotion, neuroendocrine, neurophysiology and neural structure, and connectivity.

“The specific projects will investigate one or more of these factors in a comparative context making it possible to evaluate the extent to which species vary in these areas and how these areas interact to determine prosociality of different species, and how similar endpoints may be achieved through the interactions of different mechanisms.” Dr. Albers said.

The CBN will host a symposium in the spring of 2010 on this topic. Updates, including date and location, coming soon.

- Martha Koontz

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December 2009 --  CBN Members Receive SFN Next Generation Award

CBN members Michael Black, Ph.D., and Kim Maguschak, recently received the Next Generation Award during the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Chicago.

The award, which is given to individuals at the pre/postdoctoral and junior faculty level, recognizes those who have made outstanding contributions to public communication, outreach and education about neuroscience.

Dr. Black, who works in Dr. Walt Wilczynski's lab at Georgia State University, and Kim Maguschak, a graduate student who works in the lab of Kerry Ressler, Ph.D., at Emory University, have both served as coordinators for the Atlanta Chapter of the Society for Neuroscience Brain Awareness Month outreach visits since 2006 and have helped to bring neuroscience education to more than 27,000 students in K-12 classrooms. Their efforts in organizing outreach events have brought together volunteers from local colleges and universities to provide personalized programs for Atlanta-area schools. The two were also successful in their efforts to have Governor Sonny Perdue declare March as Brain Awareness Month in Georgia.

CBN member Laura Carruth, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at Georgia State, received Honorable Mention for her work directing the CBN’s Brain Camp for Kids: Neuroscience In Action summer camp for middle school students, and the Animal Behavior and the Brain Teacher Professional Workshop at Zoo Atlanta for Georgia’s science teachers.

Kyle Frantz, Ph.D., Georgia State Associate Professor of Neuroscience and CBN member, is the 2007 recipient of the Next Generation Award.

Photo Courtesy: Society for Neuroscience. (www.sfn.org). All rights reserved. Photography by Joe Shymanski and Jeff Nyveen.

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