The Neurophysiology of Affect
and Social Behavior

About the 
Gothard Lab

  • Human brain
  • Gothard Lab Colleagues
  • Katalin Gothard

What We Study

Our Research

The brain is the most powerful instrument of nature and is unmatched in its complexity. The suffering it can inflict is also unmatched in its severity. Relief or cure will be difficult to reach until we know how the brain works and how it shapes our mental lives. The research in our lab is focused on the amygdala, a central knot in the tangle of brain circuits that control emotions.  Abnormal activity in the amygdala plays a pivotal, and often even a causal role, in numerous mental disorders.

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In both health and disease, the amygdala acts like a miniature brain by itself.  It processes inputs from all our senses and decides, moment by moment, whether the signals received are good, bad, or neutral.  It also decides how our body should respond to emotional events and whether these events should be stored in memory.  We study the cellular basis of amygdala function in non-human primates because their emotional processes and social behaviors are quite similar to our own. We take advantage of their natural behaviors  including the use of facial expressions and eye contact to engage their social partners, the building of lasting bonds through touch, and their ability to fit into complex, hierarchical societies.

Projects at the 
Gothard Lab

Monkey paw

The Central Pathways of Affective Touch

Projects

Touch is our first emotional language. Like facial expressions, touch communicates emotions and has a profound influence on the receiver. From infancy to old age, touch is at the foundation of social bonds.

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Despite the widely recognized importance of touch throughout life, remarkably little is known about how touch and emotions are linked at a cellular level in the brain.

We are exploring neural responses to social touch in the amgdala and in several cortical stages of touch processing including the the primary and secondary somatosensory cortex and the insula.

Where and How is Social Status Processed in the Brain?

Projects

Facial expressions provide a window to the social brain.

 

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To identify the motor areas involved in the production of facial expressions, we induce monkeys to exchange facial expression with individuals of different social status, while we monitor neural activity in the amygdala and in motor control and action observation areas.

Adolescent Brain Development

Projects

Primate adolescence is a period of drastic changes in body, brain, and behavior. How do these three aspects of adolescence play together to support the transition to adult-like self-sufficiency and social maturation? To answer this question, we will examine the functional connectivity between the amygdala and prefrontal cortex, an area associated with social cognition that continues developing through adolescence.

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We are monitoring macaques from pre-adolescence to adulthood through MRI, hormonal measures, behavioral performance, and electrophysiological recordings. We will compare physiological measures, impulse control, and prosocial behavior at different stages of development.

As the animals approach adulthood we expect the emergence of cognitive control that resets the directional connectivity between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex.

Recent News

08/02/2024

4 Years + 6 Papers = Retiring Before 10 Years Old

Lab News

Any average human couldn’t do it. But two rhesus macaques did. With skills including manipulating humans, moving joysticks, watching videos, and eating treats; monkeys Agave and Saguaro decided they were over the pressure of academic research and headed for retirement in the Pacific Northwest. They joined the Gothard lab around the age of 5 years […]

04/25/2024

Don’t Turn Your Nose Up at This S.C.U.T.

Lab News

In the Gothard Lab, undergraduates have always been integrated into all aspects of research; they train the animals, collect and analyze data, and help plan follow-up experiments. Recently, part of our mission focus turned to improved training of our undergraduates to share their work with both the scientific and lay community, as we believe the […]

01/23/2024

Adolescent, Appetitive, and Avoidant, Oh My!

Lab News

This past Saturday undergrad students Ryan Le and Sun Woo Kim presented a culmination of their past years research at the 35th Annual Undergraduate Biology Research Program (UBRP) Conference. Ryan’s first UBRP conference saw him describing how pharmacological manipulations affected tolerance to heat, something that all local Tucsonans could sympathize with, as part of a […]

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