Weizhe Hong

Neuroscientist, Professor @UCLA — studying the neural basis of social behavior

[Weizhe Hong @TheHongLab]

Excited to share our latest work in @Nature showing shared neural substrates for parenting and prosocial helping behavior - fantastic work by @Fangmiao4, @KaylaYingYan, and Emily Wu. Full text available here: https://t.co/1MdwgGaLIz

[Steve W. C. Chang @stevewcchang]

If you are going to the SfN meeting in DC (@SfNtweets) and are interested in social neuroscience, please join us for the Social Neuroscience Social (11/16/2026). @S4SNeuro
Hosted by the four of us: Me, @TheHongLab, Ziv Williams, @DrNancyPadilla

[Guillaume Dumas @introspection]

My new Extrospection #blog at @PsychToday is live!

We explore how social interaction is the "dark matter" of #AI. Not a feature but a constitutive condition!

New #NeuroAI work from @TheHongLab & @KanakaRajanPhD shows why...

🔗https://t.co/UhhgzM9D9q

[Anne Churchland @anne_churchland]

The idea that prosocial behavior repurposes parenting circuits has been around for a while & was deeply explored in @pschurchland (my mum!)'s book Conscience. Now @TheHongLab has the mechanistic proof in a stunning new Nature paper. The right idea finally meets the right tools.🧠

[Weizhe Hong @TheHongLab]

@moccalin Amazing work! Congratulations, Dayu!

[Society for Social Neuroscience @S4SNeuro]

Symposium submissions are due tomorrow, March 31, 2026!

[Weizhe Hong @TheHongLab]

@SMikulovic @NatureNeuro @tararaam_ Thanks Sanja!

[Weizhe Hong @TheHongLab]

We often think of survival as an individual act. But when facing hardship together, social groups may function more like a unified system than a collection of separate individuals

Excited to share our latest work @NatureNeuro on collective social dynamics
https://t.co/1YXzfW58wc

[Weizhe Hong @TheHongLab]

Interestingly, silencing the activity of this region selectively reduced active decisions in targeted mice but elicited compensatory increases in non-manipulated partners, preserving overall group-level huddle time.

[Weizhe Hong @TheHongLab]

At the neural level, we found that the prefrontal cortex tracks not just an individual's own choices, but also those made by its social partners, suggesting the brain continuously models others to enable coordinated group behavior.

[Society for Social Neuroscience @S4SNeuro]

Symposium Proposal Deadline Extended!

2026 Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Neuroscience (S4SN 2026) will take place in Montréal, Canada, August 23–26, 2026

The deadline for symposium proposals has been extended to Tuesday, March 31

Learn more: https://t.co/Bt2J5sWvMP

[Weizhe Hong @TheHongLab]

We find that specific neurons in the medial preoptic area that regulate parenting are also critical for comforting behavior toward adults. This suggests that neural systems evolved for offspring care may have provided a scaffold for broader prosocial support between adults.

[Weizhe Hong @TheHongLab]

Excited to share our latest work in @Nature showing shared neural substrates for parenting and prosocial helping behavior - fantastic work by @Fangmiao4, @KaylaYingYan, and Emily Wu. Full text available here: https://t.co/1MdwgGaLIz

[Weizhe Hong @TheHongLab]

While prosocial helping behavior is hypothesized to have an evolutionary root in caring for vulnerable newborn offspring, whether the neural substrates underlying parenting may contribute to adult-directed prosocial helping behaviors remains largely unclear.

[Weizhe Hong @TheHongLab]

Join us in beautiful Montreal for the 2026 S4SN Conference (Aug 23–26)!

Share your latest research, spark new collaborations, and engage with a vibrant social neuroscience community!

Symposium proposals and individual abstract submissions are underway: https://t.co/uiWsPwgNEX

[Weizhe Hong @TheHongLab]

We’re excited to share our latest review article (with @JanineJiang22 and @stevewcchang) synthesizing current insights into the behavioral manifestations and neural basis of cooperative behavior: https://t.co/YZBXmfGAbH

[Weizhe Hong @TheHongLab]

@morishih Thank you so much for moderating this session!

[Weizhe Hong @TheHongLab]

@IshmailSaboor Congratulations Ish!!

[Weizhe Hong @TheHongLab]

@guo_lab @NatureNeuro @YaleNeuro @Yale_INP Congratulations Junjie!!🎉🎉

[Weizhe Hong @TheHongLab]

@moccalin @pgolshani @ScienceMagazine @JanineJiang22 @JonathanCKao Thanks Dayu!

[Weizhe Hong @TheHongLab]

We are excited to share our latest work in @ScienceMagazine studying cooperative behavior in both biological and artificial intelligence systems — fantastic work by @JanineJiang22, Linfan Gu, and wonderful collaboration with @JonathanCKao! https://t.co/nVxe3E3fGA