A Map of Social Space in Your Brain
Shortform link:
https://shortform.com/artem
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My name is Artem, I'm a neuroscience PhD student at Harvard University.
🌎 Website and Social links: https://kirsanov.ai/
📥 "Receptive Field" neuro-newsletter: https://artemkirsanov.substack.com/
✨ Support me on Patreon to get access to Discord community: / artemkirsanov
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In this video we talk about how hippocampus serves a "social map", representing information about conspecific individuals at different levels of abstraction.
🕒 OUTLINE:
00:00 Introduction
03:30 Overview of physical place cells
04:57 Social information in physical space
11:28 Abstract social space
15:36 Recap
16:12 Shortform
17:03 Outro
📚 FURTHER READING & REFERENCES:
1. Omer, D. B., Maimon, S. R., Las, L. & Ulanovsky, N. Social place-cells in the bat hippocampus. Science 359, 218–224 (2018).
2. Tavares, R. M. et al. A Map for Social Navigation in the Human Brain. Neuron 87, 231–243 (2015).
3. Schafer, M. & Schiller, D. Navigating Social Space. Neuron 100, 476–489 (2018).
4. Eichenbaum, H. The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map … of Social Space. Neuron 87, 9–11 (2015).
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Icons by https://biorender.com
3D model of a bat (CC license) - https://skfb.ly/6WEYy
Brain 3D models were modeled with Blender software using publicly available BrainGlobe atlases (https://brainglobe.info/atlas-api)
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Disclaimer: This channel is my personal project. The views and content expressed here are my own and are separate from my research role at Harvard University.
#neuroscience #psychology #brain
Description remastered: February 2026. Links & Bio updated; original context preserved.