Plenary Speakers
Thursday April 16, 2026
Presidential Symposium:
Behavioral and Neural Mechanisms of Social Decision-Making
Steve Chang
Yale University
Steve Chang is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Yale University, and a member of both the Wu Tsai Institute and the Kavli Institute for Neuroscience. He serves as co-Director of Yale’s Interdepartmental Neuroscience PhD Program and co-Director of the undergraduate major in Neuroscience. His research program aims to elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying social behavior and to reveal insights into how these processes may go awry in disorders marked by social dysfunction. His laboratory employs high-density electrophysiological recordings across multiple brain regions during real-life social interactions to reveal the neural codes, computations, and network-level dynamics that support naturalistic social behavior and cognition.
Friday, April 17th, 2026
Keynote Address
The Human Amygdala, Threat, and Anxiety: Translational Progress and Challenges
Elizabeth Phelps
Harvard University
Elizabeth Anya Phelps received her PhD from Princeton University and served on the faculty of Yale University and New York University. She is currently the Pershing Square Professor of Human Neuroscience at Harvard University. Her laboratory has earned widespread acclaim for its groundbreaking research on how the human brain processes emotion, particularly as it relates to learning and memory. Dr. Phelps is the recipient of career achievement awards from the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society, the Association for Psychological Science and the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation and received the Association for Psychological Science Mentor Award. She is a fellow of the Society for Experimental Psychology and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was a founding board member of the International Neuroethics Society. She has served as the President of the Association for Psychological Science, the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society and the Society for Neuroeconomics.