Using molecular and systems neuroscience to decode the neural circuits of social behavior and emotion
Paula Alconchel
Dr. Dhananjay Bambah-Mukku is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California San Diego, where he leads an interdisciplinary research on the fundamental principles underlying natural social behaviors such as mating, aggression and parenting. They use tools such as genetic tools, single-cell and spatial transcriptomics. The aim of his work is to understand the biological bases of emotion and subjective experience that drive complex behaviors.
He earned his PhD in Cristina Alberini’s lab at New York University (NYU) and Mount Sinai where his work focused on molecular underpinnings of memory consolidation. Afterward, he pursued a postdoctoral position at Harvard University, Department of Molecular and Cellular biology in Dr. Catherine Dulac’s lab where he focused on how neural circuits control social behaviour in rodents.
Research & Scientific Contributions
1. Your research integrates molecular, circuit, and behavioral approaches to understand social decision-making. How has this interdisciplinary approach shaped the way you investigate the brain?
The brain is probably the most complicated biological system that we know, and studying its function is a challenge that needs the collective advances of multiple disciplines. This is why brain science is interdisciplinary, and this approach has really pushed my lab to stay very focused on asking tractable questions and try to gain a deeper level of understanding of specific neural elements using multiple tools.
2. What initially drew you to studying the neural mechanisms underlying social behaviors?
I have always been drawn to natural and ethologically meaningful behavior, but the decision to study social behaviors came from early findings that one could genetically identify circuits mediating these behaviors and perhaps come close to a complete understanding of how meaningful sensory stimuli are processed to give rise to complex behaviors. Eventually, these data could provide a platform to understand emotion and the evolution of complex behavior.
3. Your lab explores how early-life experiences shape social behaviors in adulthood. What are some key questions you hope to answer in the coming years?
It’s been known for decades that adult behavior is shaped by early experiences, but technological limitations have precluded a detailed analysis of the infant brain and how it processes sensory information. We hope to start understanding the richness of the infant experience and perhaps find surprises that will keep us busy for years. Some questions that we are interested in are:
4. You employ techniques like optogenetics, in vivo electrophysiology, and single-cell sequencing. Could you walk us through how these methods help unravel the neural basis of social behaviors?
We are interested in understanding how neural circuits process social information, but the identity of the specific neurons that comprised these social circuits remained elusive until we had the ability to genetically profile individual cells. Now that we have this ability, we can identify the neural components of the circuits that process social information and ask questions about their role in information processing. This requires us to use the tools you mentioned to ask about the necessity, sufficiency and behavior-related activity patterns of every element in the chain of neurons that mediate social behaviors. This type of data will hopefully help us build models of the computations that neural circuits actually perform to produce behavior and how learning can modify it.
5. What are some of the biggest technical challenges in identifying how specific neural circuits encode social memories and decisions?
Recent data from multiple labs is revealing that the brain is enormously genetically diverse, and a big challenge is to be able to understand how these diverse components work together to shape behavior. Recording from multiple cell-types during natural behaviors is technically challenging, but I think right around the corner. The bigger challenge will be to understand the computational principles that unite multiple streams of information into a coherent framework to understand behavior. Another separate challenge is to understand how genetic changes in these neural circuits, such as during speciation, have led to the great diversity of behavior that we see in nature.
6. Social behaviors are often influenced by both genetic predisposition and environmental factors. How does your research disentangle these contributions at a neural level?
Genetic access to neurons controlling social behaviors has now provided a way to explore how nature and nurture interact to produce behavior. Molecular genetic tools to examine the life histories and experience dependent modulation of gene expression in social behavior circuits might provide more detailed and nuanced explanations for how genes and the environment interact.
7. How do you see your work contributing to our understanding of neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders, such as autism or schizophrenia?
A major impediment to progress in understanding neurodevelopmental disorders is that we don’t fully understand how neural circuits control the normal developmental progression of social behaviors. We hope that our work will uncover contributions of specific neural circuits for normative behaviors, and thus perhaps provide information about neural substrates that are dysregulated in autism.
Other Questions
8. If you could investigate any aspect of social cognition with unlimited resources, what would it be and why?
Subjective experience is both fascinating and seemingly intractable, and I’d love to explore how this is controlled by the brain.
9. Do you think artificial intelligence and neuroscience will merge in a way that allows us to model social decision-making computationally?
This is a tricky question to answer. On the one hand, AI will certainly accelerate data analysis and modeling of neural data, but what’s more uncertain is whether the AI will give us insight into how biological brains produce similar behavior as AI agents. In my opinion, a focus on biology and experimental manipulations will always be key components of any scientific examination of behavior.
Personal Journey & Perspective
10. What advice would you give to young scientists interested in studying the neural basis of social behavior?
My biggest advice is to seek out opportunities in the best labs (those that have already made important discoveries) and truly immerse yourself in learning as much as you can. Seeking out mentors both within these labs and in the larger field is also crucial to crafting a path in science that suits your specific temperament and interests.
About the Author
Paula Alconchel ('26) is a junior at The University of California, San Diego concentrating in psychology.
He earned his PhD in Cristina Alberini’s lab at New York University (NYU) and Mount Sinai where his work focused on molecular underpinnings of memory consolidation. Afterward, he pursued a postdoctoral position at Harvard University, Department of Molecular and Cellular biology in Dr. Catherine Dulac’s lab where he focused on how neural circuits control social behaviour in rodents.
Research & Scientific Contributions
1. Your research integrates molecular, circuit, and behavioral approaches to understand social decision-making. How has this interdisciplinary approach shaped the way you investigate the brain?
The brain is probably the most complicated biological system that we know, and studying its function is a challenge that needs the collective advances of multiple disciplines. This is why brain science is interdisciplinary, and this approach has really pushed my lab to stay very focused on asking tractable questions and try to gain a deeper level of understanding of specific neural elements using multiple tools.
2. What initially drew you to studying the neural mechanisms underlying social behaviors?
I have always been drawn to natural and ethologically meaningful behavior, but the decision to study social behaviors came from early findings that one could genetically identify circuits mediating these behaviors and perhaps come close to a complete understanding of how meaningful sensory stimuli are processed to give rise to complex behaviors. Eventually, these data could provide a platform to understand emotion and the evolution of complex behavior.
3. Your lab explores how early-life experiences shape social behaviors in adulthood. What are some key questions you hope to answer in the coming years?
It’s been known for decades that adult behavior is shaped by early experiences, but technological limitations have precluded a detailed analysis of the infant brain and how it processes sensory information. We hope to start understanding the richness of the infant experience and perhaps find surprises that will keep us busy for years. Some questions that we are interested in are:
- What is the identity of sensory neurons mediating the processing of social information in the infant brain?
- Do infants use the same central circuits as adults in the context of social interactions?
- How does experience modify infant neural circuitry and how do these changes alter adult behavior?
4. You employ techniques like optogenetics, in vivo electrophysiology, and single-cell sequencing. Could you walk us through how these methods help unravel the neural basis of social behaviors?
We are interested in understanding how neural circuits process social information, but the identity of the specific neurons that comprised these social circuits remained elusive until we had the ability to genetically profile individual cells. Now that we have this ability, we can identify the neural components of the circuits that process social information and ask questions about their role in information processing. This requires us to use the tools you mentioned to ask about the necessity, sufficiency and behavior-related activity patterns of every element in the chain of neurons that mediate social behaviors. This type of data will hopefully help us build models of the computations that neural circuits actually perform to produce behavior and how learning can modify it.
5. What are some of the biggest technical challenges in identifying how specific neural circuits encode social memories and decisions?
Recent data from multiple labs is revealing that the brain is enormously genetically diverse, and a big challenge is to be able to understand how these diverse components work together to shape behavior. Recording from multiple cell-types during natural behaviors is technically challenging, but I think right around the corner. The bigger challenge will be to understand the computational principles that unite multiple streams of information into a coherent framework to understand behavior. Another separate challenge is to understand how genetic changes in these neural circuits, such as during speciation, have led to the great diversity of behavior that we see in nature.
6. Social behaviors are often influenced by both genetic predisposition and environmental factors. How does your research disentangle these contributions at a neural level?
Genetic access to neurons controlling social behaviors has now provided a way to explore how nature and nurture interact to produce behavior. Molecular genetic tools to examine the life histories and experience dependent modulation of gene expression in social behavior circuits might provide more detailed and nuanced explanations for how genes and the environment interact.
7. How do you see your work contributing to our understanding of neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders, such as autism or schizophrenia?
A major impediment to progress in understanding neurodevelopmental disorders is that we don’t fully understand how neural circuits control the normal developmental progression of social behaviors. We hope that our work will uncover contributions of specific neural circuits for normative behaviors, and thus perhaps provide information about neural substrates that are dysregulated in autism.
Other Questions
8. If you could investigate any aspect of social cognition with unlimited resources, what would it be and why?
Subjective experience is both fascinating and seemingly intractable, and I’d love to explore how this is controlled by the brain.
9. Do you think artificial intelligence and neuroscience will merge in a way that allows us to model social decision-making computationally?
This is a tricky question to answer. On the one hand, AI will certainly accelerate data analysis and modeling of neural data, but what’s more uncertain is whether the AI will give us insight into how biological brains produce similar behavior as AI agents. In my opinion, a focus on biology and experimental manipulations will always be key components of any scientific examination of behavior.
Personal Journey & Perspective
10. What advice would you give to young scientists interested in studying the neural basis of social behavior?
My biggest advice is to seek out opportunities in the best labs (those that have already made important discoveries) and truly immerse yourself in learning as much as you can. Seeking out mentors both within these labs and in the larger field is also crucial to crafting a path in science that suits your specific temperament and interests.
About the Author
Paula Alconchel ('26) is a junior at The University of California, San Diego concentrating in psychology.