Julian Jara-Ettinger - US grants

This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Laurie Santos and Dr. Julian Jara-Ettinger at Yale University, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist investigating how humans and non-human primates understand the minds of others. As humans, understanding what other people think, feel, desire, and believe is central to successfully navigating our social world. However, we still know little about the extent to which our ability to represent others’ mental states is shared with other animals, impeding our understanding of human cognitive evolution and slowing the development of treatments for mental disorders involving deficits in these skills.

Deficits in theory of mind (ToM) are core components of developmental and neuropsychiatric disorders including autism spectrum disorder, antisocial personality disorder, and schizophrenia, and have profound effects on social relationships, effective communication, and moral reasoning. Animal models have recently advanced our understanding of the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying diseases that affect social decision-making (e.g., Parkinson’s disease) and approaches for their treatment. However, outstanding questions about the cognitive mechanisms underlying primates’ ToM judgments have impeded the development of an animal model of ToM. This project draws on computational methods developed for modeling human ToM to overcome these challenges. By computationally modeling non-human primate (NHP) ToM for the first time, this project will elucidate which cognitive mechanisms humans and NHPs share when making judgments about others’ mental states. Additionally, the fellow will computationally identify new experimental designs that can powerfully distinguish between competing representational hypotheses about NHP ToM and will test free-ranging rhesus macaques to empirically evaluate these designs. This work will (1) contribute to our fundamental understanding of the evolution of ToM and the cognitive mechanisms that guide social behavior and (2) advance a NHP model of human ToM which will aid in our understanding and treatment of ToM-related mental disorders.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.