Women's Health Seminar Series—Hormones, Brain and Social Cognition
March 8, 2021, 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm
Seminar Title: Hormones, Brain and Social Cognition
Presenter: Dr. Elena Choleris, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience Program, University of Guelph
Dr. Choleris is particularly interested in various regulatory and modulatory aspects of social behavior. Among many, her team is investigating the neurobiological bases of (1) social learning whereby an individual acquires information from another individual, (2) social recognition, individual identification and memory (3) sociability, an individual's tendency to prefer to spend time with social vs non social stimuli, and (3) agonistic interactions in males and females. Their research involves small rodents, mainly mice and it involves an integration of various aspects of neuroscience from Ethological to Pharmacological, Molecular and Genetic. Naturalistic behavioral models as well as an evolutionary interpretation of results are pivotal factors in our research. The involvement of the cholinergic, dopaminergic, oxytocinnergic, and estrogenic systems in the social transmission of food preferences and social recognition are, at present, the main focus of their research.