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Joy Hirsch, PhD

Elizabeth Mears and House Jameson Professor of Psychiatry and Professor of Comparative Medicine and of Neuroscience
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About

Titles

Elizabeth Mears and House Jameson Professor of Psychiatry and Professor of Comparative Medicine and of Neuroscience

Biography

Humans, by nature, are irrepressibly social and neural mechanisms that underlie real-time social behaviors are not well-understood. The overarching goal of my research is to address this knowledge gap by discovering the fundamental neural mechanisms that underlie interactive social behaviors. We have developed multi-modal two-person neuroimaging technologies based on near infrared spectroscopy, fNIRS, configured for neural and behavioral measures of real-time live face-to-face and dialogue interactions between humans. Converging evidence from simultaneous measures of neural responses, facial classifications, eye-tracking, pupillometry, EEG, and behavioral reports of subjective effects builds a foundation for a new “neuroscience of two”. Emerging theoretical frameworks are founded on the interactive brain hypothesis purporting that neural systems during interaction engage processes not engaged during “solo” tasks, and recent findings of cross-brain neural synchrony suggest that brain-to-brain coupled mechanisms underlie social processing.

Recent selected publications

Hirsch, J., Noah, J.A., Zhang, X., Dravida, S., & Ono, Y. (2018). A cross-brain neural mechanism for human-to-human verbal communication. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 13(9), 907–920. DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsy070

Piva, M., Zhang, X., Noah, J. A., Chang, S. W., & Hirsch, J. (2017). Distributed neural activity patterns during human-to-human competition. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 11, 571. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2017.00571

Dravida S., Noah J.A., Zhang X., & Hirsch J. (2020). Joint attention during live person-to-person contact activates rTPJ, including a sub-component associated with spontaneous eye-to-eye contact. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 14(201). doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2020.00201

Cañigueral, R., Zhang, X., Noah, J. A., Tachtsidis, I., Hamilton, A., & Hirsch, J. (2020). Facial and neural mechanisms during interactive disclosure of biographical information. NeuroImage, 226, 117572. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117572

Descorbeth, O., Zhang, X. , Noah, J.A., & Hirsch, J. (2020). Neural processes for live pro-social dialogue between dyads with socioeconomic disparity. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience,15(8), 875–887. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsaa120

Kelley, M., Noah, J.A., Zhang, X., Scassellati, B., & Hirsch, J. (2020). Comparison of human social brain activity during eye-contact with another human and a humanoid robot. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 7, 209. doi: 10.3389/frobt.2020.599581

Hirsch J, Tiede M, Zhang X, Noah JA, Salama-Manteau A and Biriotti M (2021) Interpersonal Agreement and Disagreement During Face-to-Face Dialogue: An fNIRS Investigation. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 14:606397. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2020.606397.

Ono, Y., Zhang, X., Noah, J. A., Dravida, S., & Hirsch, J. (2021). Bidirectional connectivity between Broca's Area and Wernicke's Area during interactive verbal communication. Brain Connectivity. doi: 10.1089/brain.2020.0790.

Crum J, Zhang X, Noah A, Hamilton A, Tachtsidis I, Burgess P, Hirsch J. An Approach to Neuroimaging Interpersonal Interactions in Mental Health Interventions. Biol Psychiatry Cogn Neurosci Neuroimaging. 2022 Feb 7; 2022 Feb 7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsc.2022.01.008.



Appointments

Education & Training

PhD
Columbia University (1977)
MA
Portland State University, Experimental Psychology (1970)
BS
University of Oregon, Biology (1967)

Research

Overview

Research in the Hirsch Lab at the Yale School of Medicine aims to understand the neural circuitry and fundamental mechanisms of the brain that enable human cognition, language, emotion, decision making, and perception in both healthy/typical individuals and in patients with neurological, developmental, and psychiatric disorders. While ongoing and previous fMRI studies focus on segregated and distributed neural processes within single individuals, the Brain Function Laboratory is also expanding the experimental paradigm from a single-brain frame-of-reference to a multi-brain frame-of-reference using near-infrared spectroscopy, NIRS. The investigation of neural complexes associated with dynamical brain-to-brain/person-to-person communications is largely unexplored. For these investigations, Blood-Oxygen-Level-Dependent, BOLD, signals acquired by NIRS; electroencephalographic, EEG, signals; and eye-tracking data are acquired simultaneously on multiple individuals using surface optodes and electrodes respectively. These neuroimaging measures are synchronized with eye-tracking and physiological measures obtained by head mounted cameras and physiological sensors. Models of dual-brain interactions are based on coherence between wavelets of signals originating from cross-brain pairs of regions. Advances build upon theoretical, technical, and methodological foundations of behavioral and functional neuroimaging studies in the laboratory, and open a novel window-of-opportunity to investigate the neural correlates of dynamic interactions between individuals under natural (ecologically valid) conditions. The Brain Function Laboratory is currently focused on specific studies of dynamic coalitions and neural operations that regulate inter-personal dialog and social interactions including conflict, competition, cooperation, non-verbal communications, music and communication, and the role of mutual gaze and faces in interpersonal interactions. A long-term goal is to understand the neural correlates of dynamic social behavior. The Brain Function Laboratory was established at Yale University in 2013 under the direction of Professor Joy Hirsch following a transition from Director of the fMRI Research Center within the Program for Imaging & Cognitive Sciences (PICS) at Columbia University in New York. The Brain Function Laboratory website is located at http://www.fmri.org.

Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)

Neurosciences

Research at a Glance

Yale Co-Authors

Frequent collaborators of Joy Hirsch's published research.

Publications

2024

2023

2022

Clinical Trials

Current Trials

Academic Achievements & Community Involvement

  • honor

    George Gamow Science Award

  • honor

    Leah M Lowenstein Teaching Award

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Contacts

Locations

  • Brain Function Laboratory

    Lab

    300 George Street, Ste 902

    New Haven, CT 06511

Events