Program
*Subject to change
2025 Digital Program
Download a copy of the 2025 SANS Conference Program
View the Pre-Conference Workshop Details
Learn more about the Pre-Conference Workshop taking place on Wed. April 23.
Program Schedule
12:00 – 17:30
Conference Registration Desk Open
State/LaSalle Foyer
13:00 – 17:30
Pre-Conference Workshop:
Naturalistic methods beyond neuroimaging: Capturing behavior in the wild
State Ballroom
Presentations:
- Social network analysis
Miriam Schwyck, Columbia University - Screenomics for passive sensing of smartphone use
Brooke Ammerman, University of Notre Dame - Geolocation data collection and analysis
Aaron Heller, University of Miami
The use of naturalistic approaches to study social and affective neuroscience have recently taken our community by storm. To date, this has predominantly manifested as recording neuroimaging data during “naturalistic” paradigms in the lab (e.g., viewing naturalistic stimuli, during conversations, etc.), yet many of the social and affective phenomena of interest to the community occur outside the lab “in the wild”, and comparatively little emphasis has been placed on recording naturalistic aspects of behavior to analyze in conjunction with in-lab imaging data. Building on rising enthusiasm for naturalistic methods, this pre-conference aims to introduce attendees to emerging methods for studying naturalistic social and affective phenomena in real-world contexts.
The pre-conference offers three sessions that each highlight a key emerging approach:
- Social network analysis
- Screenomics for passive sensing of smartphone use
- Geolocation data collection and analysis.
Each session will offer a primer with an overview of the approach, showcasing unique insights that can be gained from each method along with practical challenges and considerations for implementation. The goal is to provide a roadmap for attendees interested in learning and exploring these methods to capture the complexity of social and affective phenomena as they naturally occur outside of the lab.
Attendees will:
- be introduced to methods for capturing naturalistic real-world behavior,
- gain insight into the practical applications of each method,
- partake in discussions about how to integrate these methods into their own research.
This pre-conference is designed as an accessible overview and primer rather than a hands-on session, making it approachable for participants at all levels without prior knowledge. Trainees and seasoned researchers alike are encouraged to join.
Space is limited, register early.
15:15 – 15:45
Coffee Break
07:00 – 18:00
Registration Open
State/LaSalle Foyer
08:00 – 09:00
Mentor Match Event
Huron
*Advanced registration is required to attend this session. Register here
Moderator
Hongbo Yu, University of California, Santa Barbara
Hosted by the SANS Trainee Committee, our goal for this kick-off event is to provide a mechanism for the SANS community to build new bridges with each other, and more specifically, between the faculty and the trainee communities.
To match faculty (mentors) and trainees (mentees) effectively, we ask that you indicate your intent to participate as a mentor or mentee and provide your research interests. With this information, we will match mentors with mentees. We intend to provide your matching information before the conference so you can connect in advance (virtually) and then connect in person at the kick-off event, throughout the conference, and beyond!
Sponsored by:
09:00 – 09:30
Opening Remarks & Welcome Address
LaSalle Ballroom
Speakers
Ajay Satpute, Northeastern University
Elisa Baek, Program Co-Chair, University of Southern California
João Guassi Moreira, Program Co-Chair, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Join us for our opening remarks as we officially kick off the conference and highlight sessions not to be missed!
09:30 – 10:45
Symposium 1: From emotion to social interaction: New insights from direct brain recordings in humans
LaSalle Ballroom
Moderator
Justin Minue Kim, Sungkyunkwan University
Speakers
Salman Qasim, Rutgers University
Katherine Kabotyanski, Baylor College of Medicine
Sai Sun, Tohoku University
Shawn Rhoads, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Recent advances in human intracranial recordings have transformed our understanding of how the brain encodes complex social and emotional information. Our symposium brings together innovative research examining how direct neural recordings (e.g., local field potentials, single unit recordings) can enhance research in social and affective neuroscience. We will showcase work from a panel of early career researchers representing diverse geographic and demographic backgrounds. The panel of speakers includes Dr. Salman Qasim (Assistant Professor at Rutgers University; New Brunswick, NJ), Katya Kabotyanski (MD/PhD student at Baylor College of Medicine; Houston, TX), Dr. Sai Sun (Assistant Professor at Tohoku University; Sendai, Japan), and Dr. Shawn Rhoads (Assistant Professor at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; New York, NY).
10:45 – 11:15
Coffee Break
11:15 – 12:30
Debate 1: Scaling up or zooming in? The case for large consortia vs. small investigator-led studies.
LaSalle Ballroom
Moderator
Josiah Leong, University of Arkansas
Speakers
Damien Fair, University of Minnesota
vs.
Thalia Wheatley, Dartmouth College
Practices surrounding the use of non-invasive in vivo neuroimaging methods such as fMRI have changed radically in the last five years alone. Recent evidence suggests that many effect sizes of interest obtained using these methods require exceedingly large sample sizes, while other work has emphasized the need for research findings that are generalizable across historically understudied demographics. These pressures have called into question the reliance on single-investigator led studies, with some suggesting a move toward a consortium study-based model (e.g., ABCD, HCP). However, critics of this approach note such large studies are constrained by opportunity cost to collect data on a core set of measures that may omit key constructs, while additional work has warned of sequential decay in the evidentiary value of repeated mining a single large dataset. Looking forward, this is a critical issue for the SANS community to consider as we continue our research pursuits. This collegial debate between Drs. Damien Fair and Thalia Wheatley will be a forum for the community to learn about and explore these issues in greater detail with the ultimate goal of enriching our science. For this debate, Dr. Fair will defend the position that consortia-based studies are the future of reliable and replicable science while Dr. Wheatley will argue that single-investigator led studies are the optimal way to adequately capture the unique richness of social and affective phenomena.
12:30 – 13:45
Lunch (on own)
13:45 – 14:45
Presidential Address: Cognition emerges from neural dynamics
LaSalle Ballroom
Moderator
Ajay Satpute, Northeastern University
Speaker
Earl K. Miller, The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Traditional views compared brain function to a network of neuron connections, like telegraph systems. However, growing evidence suggests higher cognition involves emergent properties: rhythmic oscillations, or “brain waves.” Brain functionality goes beyond simple connections, resembling a system where “telegraph wires” also generate “radio waves” (electric fields) for rapid communication. This enables millions of neurons to self-organize, similar to a crowd doing ‘the wave’. These rhythms play a vital role in organizing our thoughts.
14:45 – 15:30
Blitz Talks #1
LaSalle Ballroom
Moderator
Candace Raio, NYU Grossman School of Medicine
Presentations
- Attitudes shape neural responses to narratives of racial discrimination
Eunjee Ko, Ohio State University - Identifying ethologically relevant neurobehavioral biomarkers of emotional state
Katherine Kabotyanski, Baylor College of Medicine - Reduced functional efficiency within the working memory network in adolescents predicts cannabis initiation four years later while cannabis use does not lead to future changes in working memory activation
Mona Darvishi, Ohio State University - A neural signature of the bias towards self-focus
Danika Geisler, Columbia University - Language-informed neural networks predict brain responses to emotional experiences
Nilofar Vafaie, Emory University
15:30 – 17:00
Poster Session 1 & Opening Reception
State Room & State Foyer
17:00 – 18:00
Comic Sans
Hosted by
Prateekshit “Kanu” Pandey, University of California, Santa Barbara
Leor Hackel, University of Southern California
LaSalle Ballroom
Some scholars say that comedy is a simple equation of tragedy plus time. We disagree and think comedy is purely driven by Social and Affective Neuroscientists. Join us again for the 2nd edition of Comic SANS, a comedy showcase of social/affective neuroscientists and the research topics they love. Come see some of your favorite scientists perform stand-up and comedic readings!
07:30 – 17:30
Registration Open
State/LaSalle Foyer
08:15 – 09:45
EDIJ Session: Science and Funding Outside of the U.S.
LaSalle Ballroom
Moderator
Damien Stanley, Adelphi University
Speakers
Eliane Deschrijver, University of Sydney
Raphael Samuel Matthew Kaplan, Universitat Jaume, Spain
Andy Chen, National Taiwan University
Jennifer Bartz, McGill University
Social and Affective Neuroscience is an international endeavor with researchers across the globe. In this professional development symposium, the EDIJ committee has brought speakers from outside the United States to discuss science and funding opportunities in their respective countries. The speakers will not only share their academic journeys and insights into the academic system, but also provide valuable information on job opportunities and potential funding sources (grants and postdoctoral funding) for non-citizens within the country where they work. The first speaker, Dr. Deschrijver, is from the University of Sydney in Australia; our second speaker, Dr. Kaplan, from Universitat Jaume in Spain; our third speaker, Dr. Chen, is from National Taiwan University in Taiwan; and our final speaker, Dr. Bartz, is from McGill University in Canada.
09:45 – 10:15
Coffee Break
10:15 – 11:30
Symposium 2: Advances in Best Practices & Methods SANS Symposium
LaSalle Ballroom
Moderator
Elisa Baek, University of Southern California
Speakers
Harry Clelland, ELTE
Danielle Cosme, University of Pennsylvania
Gang Chen, National Institutes of Health
Shannon Burns, Pomona College
11:30 – 12:45
Debate 2: AI in social and affective neuroscience: Caution or acceleration?
LaSalle Ballroom
Moderator
Justin Minue Kim, Sungkyunkwan University
Speakers
Mark Thornton, Dartmouth College
vs.
Mohammad Atari, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Artificial intelligence (AI) has markedly transformed human society and science in a breathtakingly short amount of time. AI-based services are increasingly becoming staples in day-to-day scientific workflows. Some experts and enthusiasts have even predicted that the entire scientific enterprise will be replaced by artificial agents, and that experiments of the future may not require humans as investigators or research participants. In parallel, complex AI model architectures, such as large language models (LLM), have been touted as adequate models of the brain to help us probe causal and dynamic properties of psychological and neural phenomena. However, skeptics have warned that such a reliance on AI, broadly construed, may widen existing inequities in various domains, impoverish the training of future scientists, result in false leads, and may ultimately only help us to “produce more while understanding less”. As AI technologies and methodologies continue to grow and evolve, it is critical for the SANS community to engage in an ongoing dialogue about the role of AI, broadly, in our field. Should AI be a helpful Co-Pilot — a resident statistician, software developer and grant editor in one? Is an LLM a sufficiently useful model of the brain for research purposes? This collegial debate between Drs. Mohammad Atari and Mark Thornton will be a forum for the community to learn about and explore these issues. For this debate, Dr. Atari will defend the position that ‘less is more’ guardrails are needed when incorporating AI into our science. Dr. Thornton will argue that widespread adoption of AI will be a net gain for the SANS community.
12:45 – 14:00
Lunch (on own)
14:00 – 15:00
Keynote Address: Adolescent Neurocognitive Plasticity and Specialization Shaping Adult Trajectories
LaSalle Ballroom
Moderator
João Guassi Moreira, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Speaker
Beatriz Luna, University of Pittsburgh
During adolescence the foundation of adult neurocognitive trajectories is being established. Studies will be presented that characterize neurobiological mechanisms that provide evidence for unique developmental plasticity and specialization underlying this maturational period. We performed longitudinal studies using an accelerated cohort design spanning 10-30 years of age using high-field 7T MRI and EEG. We investigated the shape of cognitive development and reward processing and applied multimodal neuroimaging to measure concomitant developmental changes reflecting plasticity in neural activity (EEG), myelination (MRI R1), glutamate/GABA balance (MRSI) in prefrontal cortex, dopaminergic function (striatal tissue iron) in limbic systems and their connectivity informing a model of developmental specialization. Our finding provide evidence for adolescent specific plasticity of executive brain systems that may underlie risk for atypical trajectories that underlie the emergence of psychopathology but also identifies a window of unique malleability when trajectories can be affected.
15:00 – 15:30
Mid-Career Award Presentation: Developing behavioral flexibility
Moderator
Aaron Heller, University of Miami
Speaker & Recipient
Catherine Hartley, New York University
Throughout our lives, we acquire knowledge through experience. This knowledge is structured — it reflects regularities in our environments that we can discover and exploit, over the course of development, to support the flexible pursuit of valued outcomes. In this talk, I will present studies examining at the cognitive, neural, and computational levels how the exploration, learning, and decision-making processes that support or constrain flexible goal-directed behavior change over the course of development from childhood to adulthood. I will show that development confers marked changes in the evaluative processes that guide our behavior and I will discuss how these changes may adapt our choices and actions to the reward statistics of the environment and optimize behavior for specific developmental stages.
LaSalle Ballroom
15:30 – 16:15
Blitz Topics #2
LaSalle Ballroom
Moderator
Justin Minue Kim, Sungkyunkwan University
Speakers
- Autonomic arousal predicts functional network integration and memory performance during story listening
Jadyn Park, University of Chicago - Emotion regulation strategies moderate the association between anterior insula responses to fairness and relative deprivation
Melanie Kos, Temple University - Computational single-neuron mechanisms of face coding in the human temporal lobe
Runnan Cao, Washington University in St. Louis - Negatively valenced and high-arousal news headlines drive preferential evidence accumulation and influence selection behavior
Richard Huskey, University of California, Davis - The neural representation of social relationships
Mingzhe Zhang, Beijing Normal University
16:15 – 17:15
Poster Session 2 & PM Break
State Room & State Foyer
17:30 – 18:30
EDIJ Social Meet-Up
Timothy O’Toole’s Pub Chicago
622 N Fairbanks Ct, Chicago, IL 60611, United States
Join the Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Justice Committee for a meet-up to bring together SANS members from underrepresented/minoritized or marginalized groups and celebrate our shared community. This event is meant to foster belonging and encourage networking among members. Diversity Travel Award winners will be celebrated. The meet-up is open to all SANS members interested in attending.
18:30 – 21:30
SANS Social Meet-Up
Timothy O’Toole’s Pub Chicago
622 N Fairbanks Ct, Chicago, IL 60611, United States
07:00 – 16:00
Registration Open
State / LaSalle Foyer
09:00 – 10:15
Symposium 3: Single-Neuron Mechanisms of Face Perception in the Human Medial Temporal Lobe
LaSalle Ballroom
Moderator
Josiah Leong, University of Arkansas
Speakers
Hernan Rey, Medical College of Wisconsin
Amber X. Chen, University of California, Santa Barbara
Runnan Cao, Washington University in St. Louis
Shuo Wang, Washington University in St. Louis
Faces are among the most significant visual stimuli we encounter in daily life, and the human medial temporal lobe (MTL) plays a critical role in face processing. This symposium explores the single-neuron mechanisms underlying face perception in the human MTL through four distinct investigations. Specifically, we present a coherent set of studies on conceptual, visual, and social trait representations in the human MTL. The first talk discusses the computational principles underlying face perception, conceptual integration, and memory formation in the human MTL. The second talk introduces a novel visual feature-based neural coding framework in the MTL, revealing “receptive fields” within a high-level visual feature space. This framework expands beyond traditional semantic and conceptual neural codes previously associated with the MTL. The third talk focuses on quantifying the relative contributions of visual and semantic processing at the neuronal population level, providing insight into how these processes interact to support face recognition. Finally, the fourth talk examines dynamic naturalistic video stimuli to demonstrate how single neurons in the human MTL encode a wide array of information, including visual features, semantic attributes, and social traits, highlighting the comprehensive nature of MTL neural coding. Together, these findings uncover the sophisticated computational mechanisms of face perception in the human brain, bridging visual and semantic domains and deepening our understanding of how social information is represented at the neuronal level.
10:15 – 10:30
Coffee Break
10:30 – 11:45
Symposium 4: Universality and Specificity in Prosocial Decision-Making
LaSalle Ballroom
Moderator
Candace Reio, NYU Grossman School of Medicine
Speakers
Inbal Bartal, Tel-Aviv University
Yi Yang, Temple University
Rui Pei, Stanford University
Huan Wang, Stanford University
This symposium explores the universality and specificity in the neural mechanisms of prosocial decision making. The first talk (Bartal) presents findings from rodent models, highlighting evolutionarily conserved neural circuits that predict helping behaviors in rats, suggesting a universal foundation for prosocial decision making. The subsequent three talks focus on distinct aspects of specificity in these neural mechanisms. The second talk (Yang) examines age-related differences in neural responses to unfair offers during the Ultimatum Game, identifying stage of life as an important aspect of specificity. The third talk (Pei) investigates individual differences of the neuropsychological mechanisms when college students decide whether to initiate conversations with peers, emphasizing the role of positive expectations of others as the second aspect of specificity. The final talk (Wang) explores differences in the neuropsychological mechanisms underlying trust in strangers between Eastern and Western cultures, highlighting culture as the last aspect of specificity.
Together, this symposium provides an interdisciplinary perspective on prosocial decision making, employing methods ranging from animal model and neuroimaging to computational approaches and cross-cultural comparisons.
11:45 – 12:45
Lunch (on own)
12:45 – 13:05
Early Career Award Presentation: How people change their minds about people
LaSalle Ballroom
Moderator
Ajay Satpute, Northeastern University
Speaker & Recipient
Mark Thornton, Dartmouth College
First impressions of other people can have major and lasting consequences. However the process of impression formation does not stop at one’s first glance at another person. People can and do change their minds about other people. A nervous job candidate can reveal hidden strengths. A promising first date can be followed by a boorish second. What factors – internal and external – drive us to update our impressions of other people? And what are the neural mechanisms that make these updates possible? In this talk, I combine naturalistic stimuli, social interaction data, functional neuroimaging, and computational modeling to understand the drivers and mechanisms of trait impression updating.
13:05 – 13:50
Blitz Topics #3
LaSalle Ballroom
Moderator
Josiah Leong, University of Arkansas
Speakers
- The effect of friendship on temporal and spatial alignment of events in real-time conversation
Sebastian Speer, Princeton University - Neural evidence of social influence and homophily in an emerging community of adolescent girls: A longitudinal fMRI study
Yixuan Lisa Shen, University of California, Los Angeles - Common and distinct neural correlates of social interaction perception and theory of mind
Zizhuang Miao, Dartmouth College - Dissimilarity in ventral striatum response to socially rejecting events predicts increased loneliness in autistic and non-autistic youth
Kathryn Mcnaughton, University of Maryland, College Park - Unraveling the dynamic changes of mind: the critical role of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex in predicting attitude changes
Haiming Li, Northeast Normal University
13:50 – 15:00
Poster Session 3 & Coffee Break
State Room & State Foyer
15:00 – 15:45
Distinguished Scholar Award Presentation: Taking the self out of self-control
Moderator
Ajay Satpute, Northeastern University
Speaker & Recipient
Kevin Ochsnera, Columbia University
LaSalle Ballroom
15:45 – 16:00
Closing Remarks/Innovation Award Announcement & Society Business Meeting
LaSalle Ballroom
Please join us for our Society Business Meeting and a review of our society initiatives, the announcement of our 2025 Innovation Award Winner, and the announcement of our 2026 Conference location!