Team
Russell Noble, Naomi Eisenberger
Field
Psychology
Project Description
While empathy can, and oftentimes does, motivate the shift towards kindness, “too much” of it can instead lead to personal distress and shift toward focusing on oneself. Though empathy’s psychological dimensions are well understood, the neurobiological mechanisms that explain how it translates to prosocial behavior remain unclear. By pharmacologically blocking endogenous opioids (a neuromodulator that has painkilling and social bonding effects), this project seeks to establish a mechanism by which endogenous opioids facilitate helping behavior by reducing distress and enhancing compassion when faced with those in need.
Russell Noble is a 3rd year Psychology Ph.D. student in the Social and Affective Neuroscience Lab led by Dr. Naomi Eisenberger who studies prosocial behavior. His main lines of research investigate how empathy can be translated into prosocial behavior and the neural basis of the feelings of warmth, positivity, and reward that we feel after doing good for others.
Naomi Eisenberger, Ph.D. is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at UCLA who uses neuroimaging techniques to better understand why social relationships are critical for mental and physical health. Her recent work has examined whether prosocial behaviors reduce threat-related responding, such as inflammatory activity, through the activation of the mammalian caregiving system. Dr. Eisenberger has been recognized with several early and mid-career awards and is currently the Editor-in-Chief for the journal Emotion.