Hormonal neuromodulation during dyadic social interactions

Interacting socially with another person affects both brain and body. It changes our hormone levels, our heartbeat, and leaves traces in our brains.

Recent research has suggested that these responses in body and brain can adaptively tune themselves to features of the social situation, and in this turn can alter the way we respond in future social interactions.

Yet very little is known about the brain works together with the release of such “neuromodulator” signals in the body during human social interactions.

This project therefore seeks to investigate this by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain reponses, alongside heartbeat and certain key hormone levels in the blood, during touch-mediated social interactions between two people.

Crucially, it also takes into account important features of dyadic social interactions such as  context, prior interactions, as well as motivational and reciprocal aspects of mutual social behavior.

Finally, the project will probe the underlying neuromodulatory systems with pharmacological manipulations, using the drugs MDMA (“ecstasy”)--which affects feelings of social connectedness and affects levels of the hormone oxytocin--and ketanserin, which affects receptor binding of the hormone serotonin in the brain.

Elucidating these neurohormonal and bodily underpinnings of dyadic social interactions will advance our understanding of the particular social specializations of the human brain.