The Society organizes general meetings and co-sponsors symposia and conferences on specific topics of interest to Society members. Members who wish to have a conference co-sponsored by the Society should contact the Chair of the Conference Committee.


S4SN 2024

The S4SN 2024 Annual Meeting was held in Tsukuba, Japan. It featured keynote presentations by Masaki Isoda and Shihui Han. Symposia included sessions on social behavior across the lifespan, social motivation and reward, interbrain communication, and cross-species work. Of course we also celebrated early career award winners and had fantastic poster sessions. (See: S4SN 2024 Printed Program)

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S4SN 2019

The S4SN 2019 Annual Meeting was held in Chicago, Illinois, and featured a special celebration of our 10th anniversary. It featured keynote presentations by Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, and Peggy Mason. Symposia included sessions on social decision-making, stress reactivity, early career award winners and poster sessions. (See: S4SN 2019 Printed Program)

S4SN 2018

The S4SN 2018 Annual Meeting was held in San Diego, CA, November 2, 2018. The meeting consisted of a Keynote address by Larry J. Young, “The Neurobiology of Social Bonding, Social Loss and Empathy: Implications for Autism”, Emerging Topics sessions on “A systems approach to understanding empathy” and “Navigating social relationships using hippocampal networks” and two poster session. (See: S4SN 2018 Annual Meeting Printed Program)


S4SN 2017

The S4SN 2017 Annual Meeting was held in Washington, DC, November 10, 2017. The meeting consisted of a Keynote address by Nancy Kanwisher, “The Functional Architecture of Social Vision”, a Novel Approaches and Methodologies session with Julia Sliwa on “Comparing Human and Monkey Neural Circuits for Processing Social Scenes” and Suzanne Dikker on “Learning and Connecting in the Real World: Conducting Neuroscience Research in High School Classrooms and Museums” and two poster session. (See: S4SN 2017 Annual Meeting Printed Program.)


S4SN 2016

The S4SN 2016 Annual Meeting was held in San Diego, CA, November 11, 2016. The meeting consisted of a Keynote address by Michael Platt, “How We Connect: The Biology of Friendship”, a Novel Approaches and Methodologies session with John O’Doherty on “The social computational brain: how the brain learns from and makes inferences about others” and Kay Tye on “A cortico-amygdala circuit encodes observational fear learning” and two poster session. (See: S4SN 2016 Annual Meeting Printed Program.)


S4SN 2015

The S4SN 2015 Annual Meeting was held in Chicago, IL, October 16, 2015. The meeting consisted of a Keynote address by John Cacioppo, a hot topics session with Robert Froemke on “Oxytocin, maternal behavior, and excitatory-inhibitory balance” and Harriet de Wit on “Measuring prosocial effects of drugs in humans: 3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine (MDMA) and oxytocin”, several symposia discussing topics of social neuroscience from both the human and animal model perspectives and a poster session. (See: S4SN 2015 Annual Meeting Printed Program.)


S4SN 2014

The S4SN 2014 Annual Meeting was held in Washington, DC, November 13-14, 2014. The meeting consisted of a Special Keynote address by Dr. Michael Meaney, Hot Topics Session with Zheng Wu on “Molecular Dissection of Neural Circuits Underlying Parental Behavior in Mice” and Mbemba Jabbi talk on “Convergent BOLD and Beta-Band Activity in Superior Temporal Sulcus and Frontolimbic Circuitry Underpins Human Emotion Cognition”, several symposia discussing topics of social neuroscience from both the human and animal model perspectives, and two poster session. (See S4SN 2014 Annual Meeting Printed Program.)


S4SN 2013

The S4SN 2013 Annual Meeting was held on Guangzhou, China from December 5-8, 2013. The annual meeting served as a bridge to advance the research of Social Neuroscience through intensive and close collaborations between Chinese and Western scientists. The event was sponsored by School of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at Beijing Normal University, Psychology Department at Sun Yat-Sen University, Society for Social Neuroscience and the Chinese Chapter of Society for Social Neuroscience. The themes of the symposium focused on emotion, culture, morality and all the interdisciplinary aspects related to social neuroscience. (See S4SN 2013 Annual Meeting Printed Program.)


S4SN 2013

The S4SN 2013 Pre-SfN Meeting was held on November 8, 2013 in San Diego, CA preceding (SfN) the Annual Meeting for Society for Neuroscience. The themes of the symposia this year were empathy, social buffering and social loss, and the role of the opiate system in regulating social relationships. Each symposium included studies in both human and animal models. With featured keynote speaker Brian Knutson, from Stanford University and speakers Jean Decety, Larry Young, Jaak Panksepp, David Hsu, Greg Norman, Morten Kringelbach, and more! The meeting concluded with a poster session and a great opportunity to network with others interested in social neuroscience. (See: S4SN 2013 Pre-SfN Meeting Printed Program).


S4SN 2012

The 2012 Annual Meeting was held on October 11-12, 2012 in New Orleans, LA. The Third Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Neuroscience honored keynote speaker Professor Giacomo Rizzolatti, from the University of Parma, Italy. The program was based on symposia, talks, and posters proposed by members. If you attended previous meetings, you'll also notice that each year the Society for Social Neuroscience (S4SN) continues to grow and change at a remarkable pace (see S4SN 2012 Printed Program).


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Latin American Chapter

Latin American Chapter: International Workshop on Executive Functions and Social Cognition

Date: March 2nd, 2012
Place: Sociedad Cientifica Argentina (Av Santa Fe 1145), Buenos Aires, Argentina
Languages: Spanish and English

Reasoning ability: Neural mechanisms, development, and plasticity
Silvia A. Bunge, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Psychology & Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, UC Berkeley

Executive Functioning and Social Cognition in the behavioral variant Frontotemporal Dementia
Teresa Torralva

Empathy predicts utilitarian moral judgment
Ezequiel Gleichgerrcht

A situated mind: searching for contextual effects in social neuroscience
Agustín Ibáñez


S4SN 2011

The 2011 Annual Meeting was held on November 10-11, 2011 in Washington, DC.
Keynote address by Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth, response and poster session were held as a joint session with the International Neuroethics Society.

(See: S4SN 2011 Annual Meeting Program)



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S4SN 2010

The first meeting of the Society for Social Neuroscience was held in San Diego, on November 12, 2010. Presentations included:
Gene Robinson (University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana)
Social regulation of brain gene expression and aggression in honey bees.
Bob and Carol Blanchard (University of Hawaii at Manoa)
Measuring social behavior in the rat and mouse.
Larry Young (Emory University)
Neuropeptides, bonding, and social cognition in voles to man.
Bruce McEwen (Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology, Rockefeller University)
Neuroscience perspectives of stress and brain and body health: Importance of the Social Environment.
Mario Mendez (Department of Neurology, University of California Los Angeles)
Frontotemporal dementia as a window to the social brain.
David Amodio (Department of Psychology and Neural Science, New York University)
What's being controlled? Clues from the frontal cortex.
Colin Camerer (Behavioral Economics, California Institute of Technology)
Behavioral and neural evidence of cognitive hierarchy reasoning in game theory.
Martha Farah (Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania)
From social neuroscience to society: Ethical, legal and policy implications.
Chairs: John Cacioppo & Jean Decety (Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, University of Chicago)

Additional Conferences Co-Sponsored by the Society for Social Neuroscience

International Symposium: Social Neuroscience and Its Benefits to Mental Health (Seoul, July 15th, 2010)

Society for Social Neuroscience Symposium (Shanghai, Jan 15-17, 2011)

Society for Social Neuroscience Conference (Utrecht, March 21-23, 2011)

Social Psychology and the Neurosciences (Stockholm, July 12, 2011)

The International Symposium on Applied Neuroscience and Neuropsychology 2011: Surfing the Socio-Affective Brain (Hong Kong, October 3 & 4, 2011)

INECO 2011 International Symposium of Social Neuroscience and Latin American Chapter of the Society for Social Neuroscience meeting (Buenos Aires, December 20, 2011)