#858 Jessica Nowicki: The Evolution of Prosocial Behavior, Pair Bonding, and Empathy
RECORDED ON JULY 5th 2023.
Dr. Jessica Nowicki is a Research Scientist at the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford University. She is interested in the mechanistic basis of prosocial behavior in early vertebrates. She uses poison frogs, which display considerable variation in sociality among closely related species, for comparatively identifying neural correlates of pair bonding within the clade. In order to verify the functional involvement of these correlates, she then couples this with functional tests on the strongly pair bonding species, Ranitomeya imitator.
In this episode, we talk about the evolution of prosocial behavior. We talk about what prosocial behavior is, and how old it is in evolutionary history. We go through affiliative behavior, pair bonding and parental care, and empathy. We discuss how important it is to look beyond mammals, and the role of gene expression in prosocial behavior. Finally, we talk about the extended evolutionary synthesis, and how we should be wary of our own cultural biases when studying animal behavior.
Time Links:
Intro
What is prosocial behavior, and how old is it in evolutionary history?
Affiliative behavior
Pair bonding and parental care, and their neural bases
Empathy
Looking beyond humans, primates, and mammals
The role of gene expression in prosocial behavior
The extended evolutionary synthesis
Being wary of our cultural biases when studying animal behavior
Follow Dr. Nowicki’s work!
Follow Dr. Nowicki’s work:
University page: https://stanford.io/3VafRgs
ResearchGate profile: https://bit.ly/3EZq9tg
Twitter handle: @jesspnowicki