FeaturedYPE html> Zhang Lab | Neuroscience at VCU
Henry Oo will present his research at SfN 2026 in Washington, D.C. Dr. Can Tao receives the BBRF Young Investigator Award to study estrogen-related female neuropsychiatric disorders Aarushi Rao leads our new preprint on NeuroFlow, an integrated workflow for mouse brain atlas registration and quantification Dr. Guang-Wei Zhang named a 2026 NIA Butler-Williams Scholar at the NIH
Virginia Commonwealth University

Understanding the Neural Basis of Social Behavior

Connecting with others is important for our health and well-being. But in conditions such as autism, depression, and Alzheimer's disease, social withdrawal can make connection difficult, even when social support could help.

Our lab studies how social connection works, from people to brain cells. We use human data to understand social behavior and health across populations, and animal models to uncover what happens in the brain during real social interactions. By connecting these two levels, we hope to understand why social connection breaks down, and find ways to restore it.

Publications Meet the Team

What We Study

We study human social behaviors because:

Only in people can we see what social connection actually does to health, at the scale of whole populations. Large human datasets let us ask how the social environment and everyday social behavior relate to physical and mental health: who becomes isolated, and what that isolation costs. The relationship runs in both directions: poor health narrows social life, and a narrowed social life worsens health. These datasets show us that the link is real and how much it matters, but they cannot show us what the brain is doing.

Social environment and social behavior linked by two-way arrows to physical and mental health
Social environment and social behavior are reciprocally linked to physical and mental health across populations.

We study animal social behaviors because:

Animals such as mice have a rich social life of their own, which is what lets us turn these questions into mechanistic ones we can test directly in the brain. In this video, a bystander mouse works to help a companion in distress, pulling its tongue out of the mouth, which helps keep the airway open, and these efforts often allowed the unresponsive mouse to recover. Strikingly, mice do this for individuals they already know, but not for strangers. Because the behavior is this specific, we can record and manipulate the circuits that produce it while the interaction is unfolding.

Related Publication Reviving-like prosocial behavior in response to unconscious or dead conspecifics. Science, 2025
A bystander mouse pulls the tongue of an unconscious familiar mouse out of the mouth, helping keep the airway open. Read our Science paper.

How We Do It

The techniques and projects we build to get from social behavior to the circuits behind it.

AI-Powered Analysis

Automated Social Behavior Tracking

Studying social behavior in animals means scoring it, and annotating behavior by hand is slow and laborious. So we built a machine learning system that tracks animals and annotates what they are doing automatically.

Computer vision and machine learning algorithms automatically track and classify complex social behaviors at unprecedented scale.

Multi-animal tracking with identity preservation
Behavior classification using deep learning
High-throughput analysis with automated annotation
Related Publications Reviving-like prosocial behavior in response to unconscious or dead conspecifics. Science, 2025 TRACE: end-to-end temporal inference of animal behaviors from video. bioRxiv, 2026
Neural Behavior Classification
TRACE paper thumbnail
TRACE: End-to-end temporal inference and annotation of animal behaviors from video (Shi, Zhang et al., bioRxiv 2026)
Social Behavior Tracking
Group Tracking
Community Effort

Building the Animal Behavioral Dataset

A learning-based system is only as good as the data it learns from, and no large, openly available collection of annotated mouse social behavior exists yet. So we are building one.

We are establishing a large-scale, open animal behavioral dataset to accelerate research at the intersection of neuroscience and AI. The dataset will combine rich videos of mice behaviors with annotations.

Multi-view video of freely interacting animals
Expert annotations of behavioral states and events
Open to collaborators from all scientific backgrounds
Related Publication TRACE: end-to-end temporal inference and annotation of animal behaviors from video. bioRxiv, 2026
Join the Effort
Dataset Example
Neural Recording

Linking Behavior to Neural Activity

Measuring behavior precisely still only tells us what the animal did. To learn how the brain produces it, we record neural activity while the behavior is happening.

We link behavior to neural activity using cutting-edge calcium imaging and large-scale electrophysiology to understand how social behaviors are encoded in the brain.

Miniscope imaging for freely moving recordings
Fiber photometry calcium imaging
Neuropixels 2.0 large-scale electrophysiology
Related Publications Medial preoptic area antagonistically mediates stress-induced anxiety and parental behavior. Nature Neuroscience, 2021 The medial preoptic area mediates depressive-like behaviors via distinct GABAergic projections. Nature Neuroscience, 2023
Neuropixels 2.0 recording rig
Neuropixels 2.0
Fiber photometry system
Fiber Photometry
Circuit Mapping

Mapping Circuit Architecture

Recorded activity shows which neurons respond, not how they are wired together. Mapping the anatomy tells us where those signals come from and where they go.

We map circuit architecture using state-of-the-art anatomical and physiological techniques to understand how neural circuits are organized.

Anatomical tracing for connectivity mapping
Patch clamp recordings for cellular physiology
Slice electrophysiology for synaptic properties
Related Publications A non-canonical reticular–limbic central auditory pathway via medial septum contributes to fear conditioning. Neuron, 2018 Glutamatergic and GABAergic neurons in pontine central gray mediate opposing valence-specific behaviors. Neuron, 2023
Brain section showing circuit architecture
Brain section
Causal Testing

Testing Circuit Function

Activity that correlates with a behavior may not cause it. The only way to find out is to switch specific neurons on or off and see whether the behavior follows.

We test causal relationships between neural activity and behavior using precise manipulation of genetically defined neuronal populations.

Optogenetic manipulation for precise temporal control
Chemogenetic approaches for sustained modulation
Cell-type specific targeting with viral strategies
Related Publications Excitation–inhibition imbalance in medial preoptic area circuits underlies chronic stress-induced depressive-like states. Nature Communications, 2024 A bottom-up reward pathway mediated by somatostatin neurons in the medial septum complex. Nature Communications, 2022

Optogenetic Manipulation

Manipulation example coming soon
Molecular Analysis

Molecular Perspective on Neural Populations

Neurons that look alike under a microscope can differ molecularly, and that molecular identity is what makes a circuit targetable and links it to disease.

Single-cell sequencing and spatial transcriptomics provide a complementary molecular perspective on behavior-relevant neuronal populations.

Single-cell sequencing for cell type identification
Spatial transcriptomics for tissue mapping
Multi-modal integration linking genes to circuits
Related Publications Integrative mapping of spatial transcriptomic and amyloid pathology in Alzheimer's disease at single-cell resolution. bioRxiv, 2023 The neural basis of neuropsychiatric symptoms in Alzheimer's disease. Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, 2024

Molecular Profiling Visualization

Sequencing data coming soon
Recent Work

Selected Publications

Our research has been published in leading journals including Science, Nature Neuroscience, and Neuron.

Methods & SoftwareNew

NeuroFlow: An integrated, cross-platform workflow for mouse brain atlas registration and quantification

Rao A, Oo H, Tao C, Zhang GW*

bioRxiv (2026)

Read Paper
Natural Social BehaviorsFeatured

Reviving-like prosocial behavior in response to unconscious or dead conspecifics in rodents

Sun W*, Zhang GW*, Huang JJ, Tao C*, Seo MB, Tao HW, Zhang LI

Science. 387, eadq2677 (2025)

Featured by a Science Perspective: An innate drive to save a life (2025)

Read Paper
Social Behavior & StressFeatured

Medial preoptic area antagonistically mediates stress-induced anxiety and parental behavior

Zhang GW, Shen L, Tao C, Jung AH, Peng B, Li Z, Zhang LI, Tao HW

Nature Neuroscience. 24, 516-528 (2021)

Featured by a Nature Neuroscience News & Views: Balancing anxiety and social desire (2021)

Read Paper
Social Behavior & Hormones

The medial preoptic area mediates depressive-like behaviors induced by ovarian hormone withdrawal through distinct GABAergic projections

Tao C*, Zhang GW*, Huang JJ, Li Z, Tao HW, Zhang LI

Nature Neuroscience. 26, 1529-1540 (2023)

Read Paper
Sensory Processing

Transforming sensory cues into aversive emotion via septal-habenular pathway

Zhang GW, Shen L, Zhong W, Xiong Y, Zhang LI, Tao HW

Neuron. 99, 1016-1028.e5 (2018)

Read Paper
Sensory Processing

A non-canonical reticular-limbic central auditory pathway via medial septum contributes to fear conditioning

Zhang GW*, Sun W*, Zingg B, Shen L, He J, Xiong Y, Tao HW, Zhang LI

Neuron. 97, 406-417.e4 (2018)

Read Paper
Sensory Processing

Glutamatergic and GABAergic neurons in pontine central gray mediate opposing valence-specific behaviors through a global network

Xiao C, Wei J, Zhang GW, Tao C, Huang JJ, Shen L, Wickersham R, Tao HW, Zhang LI

Neuron. 111, 1486-1503.e7 (2023)

Featured by a Neuron Preview: Valence processing in pons (2023)

Read Paper
Social Behavior & Stress

Excitation-inhibition imbalance in medial preoptic area circuits underlies chronic stress-induced depressive-like states

Tao C*, Zhang GW*, Sun W, Huang JJ, Zhang LI, Tao HW

Nature Communications. 15, 8575 (2024)

Read Paper
Reward Learning

A bottom-up reward pathway mediated by somatostatin neurons in the medial septum complex underlying appetitive learning

Shen L*, Zhang GW*, Tao C, Seo MB, Zhang NK, Huang JJ, Zhang LI, Tao HW

Nature Communications. 13, 1194 (2022)

Read Paper
View All Publications
Our People

Join Our Team

We are always looking for talented and motivated researchers to join our team.

We're Hiring

We have open positions for postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and research technicians interested in neural circuits and social behavior.

Meet Our Team & Open Positions
Get in Touch

Contact

Email

guangwei.zhang@vcuhealth.org

Location

Sanger Hall, Room 9-060
Virginia Commonwealth University
Richmond, VA 23298

More Contact Information