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.

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.

Facial expressions provide a window to the social brain.

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.

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.

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.