ANN SONIC NICO Workshop on Brain Science and Social Networks
Abstract
The major goal of the project is to convene an international workshop on network theory with a focus on brain science and social networks. We aim to invite 35 participants in total, with 25 scholars as workshop attendees and 8-10 speakers as presenters. By bringing together these scientists who are experts in brain sciences and social network analysis, we hope to advance understanding across multiple fields, including brain science and computational social sciences. This year we decide to strategically shape a program that puts neuroscientists and social network scientists in dialogue with one another to address critical gaps in the literature. Recent advances in brain imaging techniques present a remarkable opportunity to gain a mechanistic understanding of brain functions, and their role in cognition and disease. Such an understanding necessitates bringing together interdisciplinary teams of researchers. One particularly powerful approach builds functional networks from fMRI data to provide insights into human cognition its variation over individuals and its alteration in disease. For example, functional networks activated in response to health interventions can predict behavioral trajectories. Yet, current tools and approaches to studying network architecture largely focus on static snapshots of the brain over long time intervals. Cutting-edge dynamic network tools can begin to infer organizational principles and their temporal variation in response to our proposed cognitive manipulations. In parallel, foundational work conceptualizes social network structure as a type of individual difference that affects and is affected by a broader array of psychological functions and behaviors. Further, mounting empirical evidence shows that behaviors spread from person to person, in both online and offline social networks. Bringing these domains together, emerging work has begun to quantify the ways in which group structure, brain, and behavior relate to one another.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 18, 2020
- Accession Number
- AD1187781
Entities
People
- Noshir Contractor
Organizations
- Northwestern University