About

Steve Chang is an Associate Professor of Psychology and of Neuroscience at Yale University. He serves as co-Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Neuroscience (NSCI) Major and co-Director of Graduate Studies for the Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program (INP). Chang earned his Ph.D. in 2009 from Washington University in St. Louis. His research focuses on how the brain computes social preferences and mediates prosocial and antisocial decisions, with particular attention to the neural mechanisms underlying social behavior. His laboratory investigates these processes by examining the roles of the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala during social interactions, utilizing neurophysiological, neuropharmacological, and functional neuroimaging techniques in both real-life social interactions and complex decision-making scenarios. His work aims to elucidate neural mechanisms that can ultimately help treat social deficits in various psychiatric disorders.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Cognitive psychology
• Cognitive science
• Computer science

Selected publications

• Comparative Game Theory: Bringing Ethology Back into Social Decision Neuroscience

  2026-01-01

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The Anterior Cingulate Cortex and Prosocial Behavior toward Others in Negative State

  Journal of Neuroscience · 2026-02-25

  articleOpen access

  Prosocial behaviors, voluntary actions benefiting others, are essential for social bonds and group survival across species from insects to primates. This review examines the neurobiological foundations of prosocial behavior, with an emphasis on the role of the cingulate cortex (particularly the anterior cingulate cortex), in mediating prosocial and helping actions toward others in distress. We summarize recent studies across species and discuss how different parts of the cingulate cortex process information about others' behavioral states, encode empathetic responses, and regulate prosocial actions. Critical gaps remain in establishing causal links between perceiving others' needs, experiencing empathetic responses, and executing helping behaviors. Addressing these challenges requires novel experimental designs capable of independently manipulating these interrelated processes.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Central Questions for Social Neuroscience Research

  Journal of Neuroscience · 2026-02-25

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Over the past decade, interest in social neuroscience has expanded rapidly. This growth raises a fundamental inquiry: what are the central questions that now define the field of social neuroscience? While the answer to this question depends on the appropriate neurobiological level of explanation, ranging from cellular substrates to systems and network-level dynamics, there are commonalities that transcend multiple levels. One longstanding question in the field of social neuroscience concerns whether there is social specificity in the brain. If a neural substrate exhibits social specificity, does it do so at the algorithmic level, the implementational level, or both? Another emerging question concerns how neural systems construct and update internal models of the social world composed of other agents and factors of one's social environment. These internal models of the social world must integrate social information throughout one's lifespan, adding a critical developmental component in building social world models. Relatedly, another core question concerns internal states that dynamically guide social behavior and social cognition. These internal states may have components that are innately driven or acquired by learning in the social world. With powerful neuroscientific tools and behavioral sophistications, the field is gaining a great amount of traction to begin to answer such central questions. This special collection brings together seven selected contributions that reflect cutting-edge and cross-species research in the field of social neuroscience. As editors, we encourage readers to consider the aforementioned and other big-picture questions in social neuroscience as they engage with the manuscripts in this issue.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Compositionality of social gaze in the prefrontal-amygdala circuits

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025-07-29 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Social gaze underpins primate communication, yet the neural principles enabling its flexibility remain unknown. Each social gaze can be deconstructed into three primitives: gaze content, social state, and gaze duration. To reduce dimensionality and facilitate generalization, the brain needs to represent these primitives in an abstract format. Here we show that social gaze is governed by a compositional code built from these primitives in the brain. In male and female macaques (neural recordings in two males) engaged in real-life social gaze interaction, behavior analyses revealed that partner responses were determined by how primitives were combined, rather than by their independent sums, providing evidence for behavioral compositionality. The basolateral amygdala and the anterior cingulate gyrus represented content and state in an abstract format and orthogonally to one another, whereas the dorsomedial prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortices exhibited limited generalization. Linear mixed-selective neurons encoding both content and state in the basolateral amygdala and the anterior cingulate gyrus, but not in the other two areas, facilitated the abstraction underlying generalization. Moreover, distinct channels routed content and state information across prefrontal-amygdala circuits to minimize interference, which was mediated by linear mixed selectivity neurons. These findings identify a neural grammar for social gaze, revealing compositional computations as a principle of flexible social communication.

  PublisherDOI

• How Gendered Moral Norms Amplify Punishment for Selfish Women

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Dynamic modulation of social gaze by sex and familiarity in marmoset dyads

  eLife · 2025-03-17

  preprintOpen access

  Summary Social communication relies on the ability to perceive and interpret the direction of others’ attention, and is commonly conveyed through head orientation and gaze direction in humans and nonhuman primates. However, traditional social gaze experiments in nonhuman primates require restraining head movements, significantly limiting their natural behavioral repertoire. Here, we developed a novel framework for accurately tracking facial features and three-dimensional head gaze orientations of multiple freely moving common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus). By combining deep learning-based computer vision tools with triangulation algorithms, we were able to track the facial features of marmoset dyads within an arena. This method effectively generates dynamic 3D geometrical facial frames while overcoming common challenges like occlusion. To detect the head gaze direction, we constructed a virtual cone, oriented perpendicular to the facial frame. Using this pipeline, we quantified different types of interactive social gaze events, including partner-directed gaze and joint gaze to a shared spatial location. We observed clear effects of sex and familiarity on both interpersonal distance and gaze dynamics in marmoset dyads. Unfamiliar pairs exhibited more stereotyped patterns of arena occupancy, more sustained levels of social gaze across social distance, and increased social gaze monitoring. On the other hand, familiar pairs exhibited higher levels of joint gazes. Moreover, males displayed significantly elevated levels of gazes toward females’ faces and the surrounding regions, irrespective of familiarity. Our study reveals the importance of two key social factors in driving the gaze behaviors of a prosocial primate species and lays the groundwork for a rigorous quantification of primate behaviors in naturalistic settings.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Canonical decision computations underlie behavioral and neural signatures of cooperation in primates

  Neuron · 2025-10-23

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Causal Dynamics of Social Gaze in Primate Prefrontal-Amygdala Networks Revealed by Dynamic Bayesian Modeling

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025-08-10 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen accessCorresponding

  Abstract Social gaze is a fundamental channel of primate communication, shaping dynamic interactions and fostering mutual understanding. While prior studies have mapped the behavioral correlates of social gaze across the prefrontal-amygdala circuits, the causal architecture of these interactions remains poorly understood. Here, we introduce a novel algorithm to integrate independently recorded sessions into “super-sessions”, validated using ground-truth synthetic data, enabling the reconstruction of simultaneous multi-area recordings aligned to matched gaze sequences. Applying Dynamic Bayesian Network analysis to these super-sessions, we uncover temporally structured, behavior-dependent causal interactions among the amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), and anterior cingulate cortex. When macaques were the targets of social gaze, the brain-behavior network exhibited positive temporal modulations, with the dmPFC emerging as the dominant source and the amygdala as a primary recipient of influence. When macaques directed their gaze toward their partners, the dmPFC and amygdala retained their respective roles. Prefrontal regions positively modulated one another, while the amygdala acted solely as a downstream target receiving exclusively negatively modulated prefrontal inputs. These findings reveal previously unknown directional interactions in the primate social brain and highlight distinct causal architectures underlying the bidirectional dynamics of social attention.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Oxytocin and opioid antagonists: A dual approach to improving social behavior

  Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025-06-05 · 1 citations

  reviewSenior authorCorresponding

  Social behavior is a cornerstone of mental health and well-being, shaped by complex neuromodulatory processes. Pharmacological interventions targeting social deficits have largely centered around oxytocin (OT). While some clinical trials have shown promising results for OT in addressing social impairments, others have reported inconsistent outcomes, with concerns about its weak and variable effects. The central OT system is exceptionally complex, given its interactions with several neuromodulatory systems. This review explores the dynamic relationship between the OT and opioid systems in regulating social behavior and their potential therapeutic applications. Despite the known physiological relationship between the opioid and OT systems, many questions about the effects of their interaction on social behavior remain unanswered. Recent research investigating the combined effects of OT and opioid antagonists has reported promising results in improving social functioning. Here, we highlight key challenges in this area, including how to manipulate the OT and opioid systems without disrupting their natural balance, understanding their role in real-world social contexts, and achieving precise modulation of their effects. Evaluating these points will require cutting-edge neuroscience techniques, such as optogenetics, CRISPR, and designer ligands, to refine our understanding and pave the way for novel therapeutic strategies to improve social functioning.

  PublisherDOI

• Instrumental harm and impartial beneficence distinctively frame cognitive representations of moral decision problems.

  Journal of Experimental Psychology General · 2025-11-01

  articleOpen access

  Utilitarian ethical theories argue that the morality of actions depends on their consequences for impartially maximizing overall welfare. Recent research suggests that individual differences in utilitarian tendencies fall along two dimensions: a permissive attitude toward harming others for greater good (instrumental harm [IH]) and an impartial concern for others' welfare (impartial beneficence [IB]). We hypothesize that these dimensions operate as intuitive theories in the moral domain, framing distinctive patterns of moral judgments and behavior. Using intersubject representational similarity analysis of behavioral data (N = 254), we found that when participants shared endorsement of instrumental harm or impartial beneficence, they showed similar patterns of moral judgment and decision making. Intersubject representational similarity analysis of functional neuroimaging data (N = 68) revealed that participants with similar endorsement of instrumental harm or impartial beneficence showed similar neural encoding of moral choice attributes, even when they made different choices. Meanwhile, participants with dissimilar endorsement of these dimensions showed distinctive neural encoding of moral choice attributes, even when they made similar choices. These similarity and dissimilarity patterns emerged in distinct brain regions for instrumental harm and impartial beneficence. Together, our findings suggest that instrumental harm and impartial beneficence distinctively frame cognitive representations of moral decision problems, over and above guiding judgments and decisions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Behavioral and Neural Bases of Combining Oxytocin and Naloxone for Optimally Enhancing Interactive Social Attention

  NIH · $2.7M · 2019–2024

• NIH Grant K99MH099093

  NIH · $164k · 2014

• Role of Oxytocin in the Amygdala-Prefrontal Network During Social Decision-Making

  NIH · $747k · 2014–2017

• Neural mechanisms of reward-guided reciprocity

  NIH · $411k · 2015–2017

• Toward A Macaque Model Of Social Brain Dysfunction In Real-Life Social Interactions

  NIH · $2.5M · 2016–2021

Frequent coauthors

• Olga Dal Monte

  Yale University

  41 shared

• Nicholas Fagan

  Yale University

  29 shared

• Michael L. Platt

  University of Pennsylvania

  18 shared

• Anirvan S. Nandy

  Yale University

  13 shared

• Siqi Fan

  Yale University

  13 shared

• Joel Greenwood

  Kavli Institute for Theoretical Sciences

  11 shared

• Amrita R. Nair

  Yale University

  11 shared

• Olivia Meisner

  Yale University

  10 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Anatomy and Neurobiology; Neurosciences program

  Washington University in Saint Louis

  2009

• B.A., Psychology

  Washington University in Saint Louis

  2003