Hebrew University researchers discover that the brain prepares for social interaction before it happens

A groundbreaking study by researchers at The Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has found that the brain prepares for social interaction several seconds before it begins.

Using advanced whole-brain imaging in zebrafish during live social encounters, Dr. Lilah Avitan and PhD student Imri Lifshitz discovered that the brain enters a distinct neural state before an animal approaches another member of its species. This neural signature predicts not only whether an upcoming action will be social, but also how social the individual is overall.

The signal appears several seconds before any visible behavior occurs, suggesting that the biological foundations of social interaction emerge before conscious action and that the brain may begin preparing for social engagement before the individual acts.

The strength of this neural signature varied among individuals. Animals with a stronger brain-wide pattern consistently displayed higher levels of sociability, suggesting that the signal reflects an individual’s underlying social drive and may help explain why some individuals are naturally more social than others.

The team also identified a specific group of neurons in the brain’s pallium, a region involved in processing information and guiding behavior, that appears to promote social approach behavior, providing one of the clearest links yet between neural activity and social motivation.
Because key brain structures involved in social behavior are shared across species, the findings may ultimately provide new insights into human social functioning and disorders in which social behavior is disrupted.

“This study shows that the brain begins preparing for social interaction before any action is visible,” said Dr. Avitan. “The neural state we identified predicts not only an upcoming social interaction, but also an individual’s overall tendency to be social.”

The study was published in Nature Communications.