Dr. Kay Tye: The Biology of Social Interactions and Emotions

In this episode, my guest is Dr. Kay Tye, PhD, Professor of Systems Neurobiology at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator. We discuss the neural circuit basis of social interactions and loneliness. We also discuss how animals and people establish themselves in a group hierarchy by rank and how the brain responds to dominance and subordination.

Much of our discussion relates to how social media impacts our sense of social connectedness or lack thereof. The topics covered in this episode are directly relevant to anyone interested in the neuroscience of mental health, work-life balance, abundance versus scarcity mindset, and interpersonal dynamics.

Journal Articles

• Input-specific control of reward and aversion in the ventral tegmental area (Nature)
• Extraneous factors in judicial decisions (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)
• Total social isolation in monkeys (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)
• Dorsal Raphe Dopamine Neurons Represent the Experience of Social Isolation (Cell)
• Neural mechanisms of social homeostasis (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences)
• The neural circuitry of social homeostasis: Consequences of acute versus chronic social isolation (Cell)
• Cortical ensembles orchestrate social competition through hypothalamic outputs (Nature)

Other Resources

• The Eisenhower Matrix: How to prioritize your to-do list
• Chimp Empire (Netflix series)
• Advice for a Young Investigator
• NIH Human Connectome Project (HCP)

People Mentioned

• S.M.: patient with bilateral amygdala damage
• Harry Harlow: Psychologist, known for his social isolation experiments in monkeys
• Markus Meister: Professor of Biological Science at Caltech
• Ben Barres: Neuroscientist at Stanford