Stephen Shea

Assistant Professor
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Ph.D., University of Chicago

Phone: (516) 367-8823
sshea@cshl.org

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Research

I study the neural circuitry of social communication and decisions. My laboratory’s efforts are directed at answering a number of related questions such as: What are the neural mechanisms for interpreting social information and selecting appropriate behaviors? How do we discriminate and remember familiar individuals? How do emotion and social context shape our attention and memories? And how are social cues from our various senses integrated to shape behavioral decisions?

In my lab, we directly address these questions using natural social communication behavior in mice. Mice communicate extensively with mates and kin using chiefly olfactory and auditory signals, which makes them a convenient organism for studies of multimodal detection and integration of social cues. Importantly, the choice of mice as a model system also allows us to use powerful genetic technologies to expand our toolbox as systems neuroscientists, and in the future, to assess corresponding dysfunctions of neural circuitry and communication behavior in mouse models of human diseases such as autism. We employ a combination of behavior, in vivo electrophysiology, including experiments in behaving mice, and viral/optogenetic methods.

Succinctly, our long-term goal is to anatomically and physiologically trace complete neural circuits that mediate social decision arcs from the initial detection of social cues, to the processing and storage of these cues, and ultimately on to the selection of a behavioral response.