Lab News & Photos
CSNL Members Attended the 2023 SANs conference
April 2023
The lab had a wonderful time attending the 2023 SANS Conference in Santa Barbara.
At the conference, Miriam Schwyck gave a symposium talk titled “Contention in real-world social networks: Examining neural and behavioral correlates of structural equivalence”, João Guassi Moreira gave a data blitz talk and presented a poster on how neural representation of familiar others shapes social decisions, and Lisa Shen presented a poster titled “Disrupted neural synchrony during naturalistic perception is linked to social disconnection in schizophrenia”.
Looking forward to SANS next year in Toronto, Canada!
Lab Social
February 2023
The lab successfully uncovered the secrets of an undersea laboratory and escaped!!!
dr. Elisa Baek receives Chancellor’s Award for postdoctoral research
November 2022
Congratulations to Elisa for being one of eight recipients of this year’s Chancellor's Award for Postdoctoral Research!
Lab news
September, October 2022
Miriam Schwyck, whose paper “Neural encoding of novel social networks: Evidence that perceivers prioritize others’ centrality” (with Meng Du, John Andrew, and Pratishta) is accepted at Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.
Elisa Baek’s paper “Lonely individuals process the world in idiosyncratic ways” (with Meng, Ryan, Karina, and Mason) is accepted for publication at Psychological Science.
Elisa Baek’s new review paper “Shared understanding and social connection: Integrating approaches from social psychology, social network analysis, and neuroscience” is accepted at Social and Personality Psychology Compass.
Miriam Schwyck and Meng Du’s paper “Similarity among friends serves as a social prior: The assumption that “birds of a feather flock together” shapes social decisions and relationship beliefs” is officially accepted at Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
Meng Du is selected as one of UCLA’s nominees for the Google PhD Fellowship.
Concepción Esparza transitions to become a full-time research associate at CSNL.
Awards and Fellowships
June 2022
Congratulations to Ruby Basyouni for receiving the Harold H. Kelley Award for her paper titled “Mapping the Social Landscape: Tracking Patterns of Interpersonal Relationships.” The Kelley Award has been given since 1997 and honors an exceptionally meritorious research paper addressing basic issues or theory in social psychology.
Congratulations to Ryan Hyon for receiving the Shelley Taylor Dissertation Award, which honors an exceptionally meritorious dissertation completed by a graduate student whose primary advisor is in the Social Area. Ryan’s dissertation was titled “Investigating the Relationship Between Individual Differences in the Brain and Social Network Structure.”
Congratulations to João Guassi Moreira for receiving the Millard Madsen Distinguished Dissertation Award for the best developmental dissertation.
Congratulations to Miriam Schwyck for winning a Dissertation Year Fellowship!
Dr. Carolyn Parkinson receives tenure!!!
May 2022
Congratulations to Carolyn for receiving tenure and becoming an Associate Professor!!! Thank you for your amazing mentorship and everything you have done for the lab♡
COngrats to Dr. Ryan Hyon for successfully defending his dissertation!!!
May 2022
Awards and Fellowships
May 2022
Congratulations to Meng Du for receiving the Liu Yunghuo Bei Qui Memorial Fellowship as well as a travel award for the 2022 Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition!
Congrats to Elisa Baek on an amazing SANS talk and on winning the Best Paper by a Postdoctoral Fellow in Psychology Award!
Welcome João!!!
March 2022
João received an NSF postdoctoral fellowship that will support his postdoctoral work in the lab. Welcome João:)
Welcome Concepción Esparza!!!
January 2022
Concepción Esparza is joining the lab as a PROPS student starting this quarter! Welcome to the lab:)
LAB NEWS
December 2021
Congratulations, Ruby Basyouni, whose first first-author review paper, “Mapping the Social Landscape: Tracking Patterns of Interpersonal Relationships” was just accepted as a feature review in Trends in Cognitive Sciences!
Congratulations Elisa Baek for being awarded the SfN Trainee Professional Development Award!
lab news
October 2021
Elisa Baek whose first first-author empirical paper from our lab, with co-authors including Ryan Hyon and Karina, is accepted in principle at Nature Communications!
Elisa Baek receives a Brain Research Institute/Semel Institute Postdoctoral Fellow Travel Award for SfN!
Miriam Schwyck receives an SPSP Graduate Student Travel Award!
Congrats to everyone!!!
Welcome lisa!
September 2021
Welcome Lisa Shen as CSNL’s new lab manager! After working in the lab as an undergraduate RA and graduating from UCLA, Lisa now continues her work in the lab as a full-time research associate/lab manager.
Lab news
June 2020
Congrats Meng Du for being selected as a TA for the Neuromatch Academy and for the Grace Hopper Celebration Scholarship!
miriam weaverdyck and ryan hyon receive poster awards at sans 2019
May 2019
Congratulations to both Miriam and Ryan for winning poster awards at SANS 2019 in Miami, Florida!
Miriam presented her work on how context modulates the neural representation of social networks, and Ryan presented his work on how functional connectomes are predictive of individuals’ social network positions in the social network of an entire village.
Meng du and ryan hyon to join csnl as phd students
April 2019
Meng and Ryan will make the transition from full-time CSNL researchers to CSNL graduate students! They will be enrolling in UCLA’s Psychology Ph.D program, beginning in Fall 2019. Congratulations, Meng and Ryan! We’re happy to keep you here at CSNL, go Bruins!
Miriam weaverdyck receives national science foundation graduate research fellowship award
April 2019
Miriam was selected to receive an NSF GRFP award, and Ryan Hyon received an NSF GRFP Honorable Mention award! Congratulations, Miriam and Ryan!
Congratulations, Yuchen Li!
June 2018
Yuchen Li presented her senior honors thesis project during UCLA's Undergraduate Research Week! After graduating, Yuchen will move to Chicago to begin her Ph.D. in Dr. Karl Szpunar's UIC Memory Lab. Congratulations, Yuchen!
The lab's research was also recognized with a Faculty Career Development Award from the UCLA Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.
research featured on The Today Show
June 2018
The Today Show visited the lab for a segment on neural similarity and friendship. You can view the piece on the NBC website or on YouTube.
Lab outing: (Virtually) saving the world
June 2018
The lab welcomes John Andrew Chwe, currently visiting from NYU!
John Andrew and fellow lab members Meng Du, Ryan Hyon, Miriam Weaverdyck, and Carolyn Parkinson visited Virtual Room LA for a collaborative virtual reality experience where we were tasked with saving humanity from a rogue band of time-travelers. Saving the world is exhausting, so we celebrated with a delicious robata-style dinner.
New paper, awards, and more lab news
May 2018
CSNL graduate student Miriam Weaverdyck was awarded a Graduate Summer Research Mentorship Award, was accepted to the 2018 São Paulo School of Advanced Science on Social and Affective Neuroscience, and had her first first-author paper from the lab accepted for publication!
Recent research linking friendship and neural response similarity was featured in a piece by Lydia Denworth in Psychology Today!
Lab director Carolyn Parkinson was awarded a Faculty Research Grant from the UCLA Academic Senate’s Council on Research!
Former lab manager Mary Decker recently accepted an offer to pursue her M.D. at Harvard Medical School!
Congratulations, all!
lab director carolyn parkinson receives ucla life sciences award
May 2018
Carolyn was selected to receive the 2017-2018 UCLA Life Sciences Division Excellence Award for Outstanding Research Publication for her Nature Communications paper, Similar neural responses predict friendship.
Congratulations, Carolyn!
CSNL members present at sans 2018; professor parkinson receives innovation award
May 2018
Miriam Weaverdyck, Ryan Hyon, and Meng Du traveled to Brooklyn, NY to present their work at the 2018 Social and Affective Neuroscience Society (SANS) meeting!
Professor Parkinson was also voted by members of SANS to receive the SANS 2018 Innovation Award. This award recognizes her work titled Spontaneous Neural Encoding of Social Network Position in Nature Human Behaviour as a publication that likely contributes to the discovery of new hypotheses, new phenomena, or new ways of thinking about social neuroscience!
Congratulations to all!
Research featured in the New York Times
April 2018
Recent research predicting friendship from neural response similarity was profiled in the New York Times in a piece by Natalie Angier. The piece was featured on the cover of this week’s Science Times section and was also selected for the newspaper’s educational Student Opinion feature.
csnl undergraduate research assistants to pursue graduate degrees
April 2018
CSNL honors student Yuchen Li will attend University of Illinois at Chicago's (UIC) Cognitive Psychology Ph.D program beginning in Fall 2018. She will work under Professor Karl Szpunar in the UIC Memory Lab.
CSNL research assistant Zeynep Gungor will pursue a Master of Science degree (MSc) in Organizational and Social Psychology at the London School of Economics beginning in Fall 2018.
Congratulations to Yuchen and Zeynep, and we wish them the best in their future endeavors in psychology!
Research Spotlight
April 2018
New research linking friendship and neural responses to naturalistic stimuli is the focus of a ‘Spotlight’ article in Trends in Cognitive Sciences by Matthew Lieberman.
Alfred P. Sloan fellowship in Neuroscience
February 2018
It was announced in the New York Times today that Carolyn was named one of the 2018 Alfred P. Sloan fellows in Neuroscience. The Sloan Foundation honors “early-career scholars whose research & achievements distinguish them as among the very best scientific minds working today.”
News coverage of recent research
February 2018
Recently published research linking social network proximity and similarity of neural responses to naturalistic stimuli was featured in media outlets including the LA Times, Newsweek, Pacific Standard, Vice, NPR, CBC, and Scientific American, as well as on YouTube's SciShow.
NEW PUBLICATION: Similar neural responses predict friendship
January 2018
New research published in Nature Communications demonstrates that people who are closer together in a social network process the world around them more similarly.
For a complete list of CSNL publications, please see our Publications page.
Welcome and Congratulations!
Fall 2017
The lab welcomed our new lab manager, Ryan Hyon, and our new PhD student, Miriam Weaverdyck!
In addition, Yuchen Li received a scholarship from the Undergraduate Research Scholars Program (URSP) for the 2017-2018 school year, which will support her senior Honors thesis in the lab. Congratulations, Yuchen!
Undergraduate Research WeeK 2017
May 2017
Ruby Basyouni and Vanessa Castro both presented their CSNL research projects during UCLA’s Undergraduate Research Week.
In addition, Vanessa Castro was awarded the Dean’s Prize for Outstanding Undergraduate Research in recognition of her excellent presentation of her Honors thesis research!
The lab was also recently awarded a Faculty Research Grant by the UCLA Academic Senate’s Council on Research.
Congratulations, all!
New publication: Spontaneous Neural Encoding of Social Network Position
April 2017
New research published in Nature Human Behaviour demonstrates that humans have accurate knowledge of where familiar individuals sit in our real-world social networks (e.g., how many 'degrees away' from us they are; the extent to which they're well-connected to well-connected others; the extent to which they bridge between different 'cliques') and spontaneously activate this knowledge when encountering one another.
This work was highlighted in a News and Views piece in the journal by James Curley and Kevin Ochsner.
For a complete list of CSNL publications, please see our Publications page.
New publication: Emotions are Understood from Biological Motion Across Remote Cultures
April 2017
A series of studies published in the April issue of Emotion suggests that similar patterns of bodily movement are used to convey similar emotions across remote cultures -- from a remote Kreung hill tribe in northeastern Cambodia, to a (slightly less) remote college town in the northeastern United States.
For a complete list of CSNL publications, please see our Publications page.
Vanessa Castro to Attend UC Berkeley
April 2017
CSNL honors student Vanessa Castro will attend UC Berkeley's Social-Personality Ph.D. program beginning in Fall 2017. She will work under Professor Serena Chen in the Self, Identity, and Relationships (SIR) Lab. We are thrilled about Vanessa's well-deserved acceptance and look forward to her continued contributions to social psychology. Congratulations, Vanessa!
UCLA Hosts the 10th annual meeting of the social & affective neuroscience society
March 2017
UCLA hosted the 10th annual meeting of the Social & Affective Neuroscience Society. Organizers Carolyn Parkinson, Jennifer Silvers, Naomi Eisenberger, and Matt Lieberman put together a program of events that brought together social brain scientists for debates, poster sessions, faculty & trainee talks, and symposia. Next year's conference will be held May 3-5 in Brooklyn, NY.
Temescal Canyon Hike
March 2017
CSNL lab members celebrated the end of the quarter with a hike up Temescal Canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains. A rainy morning gave way to a beautiful afternoon and we enjoyed the waterfalls, flowers, animals, and views along the trail. Being brain scientists, we were eager to ascend to Skull Rock where we relished vistas of West LA and the Palisades. We're looking forward to another term of research and excited about having our great RAs around for a few more months!
CSNL Welcomes Ruby Basyouni
January 2017
The lab welcomes senior Ruby Basyouni as an undergraduate research assistant. Ruby has been admitted to the UCLA Psychology Research Opportunity Program (PROPS), which provides opportunities for undergraduates to begin their research careers and to acquire the needed experience for pursuing advanced studies in psychology. Working alongside Professor Parkinson, Ruby will be designing a study and collecting neuroimaging data.
The Lab Escapes!
December 2016
Lab members Taylor Pio, Mary Decker, Meng Du, Carolyn Parkinson, Yuchen Li, and Vanessa Castro (L-R) met at an escape room in Westwood to test their problem-solving and teamwork abilities. Each lab member contributed uniquely to the effort and the team managed to escape from the "Den of the Occult" with minutes to spare!
Vanessa Castro Admitted to URSP
Fall 2016
CSNL honors student Vanessa Castro was admitted to the Undergraduate Research Scholars Program (URSP) for the 2016-2017 school year. The URSP scholarship is awarded to juniors and seniors who have a strong commitment to research and who are completing a comprehensive independent research project or a departmental honors thesis. Vanessa is also a member of the UCLA Psychology Departmental Honors Program and is working on her senior thesis with Professor Parkinson.