Communication Neuroscience Lab
Our mission is to increase health and happiness.
The Communication Neuroscience Lab is an interdisciplinary group whose mission focuses on catalyzing communication that increases human health and happiness and reduces human suffering by gaining insight into how people coordinate, bond, and influence one another.
We view communication as key to solving society’s most pressing problems. It is at the center of human health and happiness — being connected to others has enormous benefits for mental and physical wellbeing, and both healthy and unhealthy behaviors spread through social networks. We use a unique set of tools from biological, social, and engineering sciences to motivate people to make choices that increase the spread of innovation, happiness, health, and the health of our democracy, while reducing the spread of negative outcomes. We use the brain as one powerful window to understand and predict outcomes that are challenging to predict otherwise.
Photo Credit (top image): iStock / Movus
Our Research
The brain is a window to understand attitude and behavior change at the individual, group, and population levels
Featured Projects
Brain-based Prediction of Message Effectiveness (BB-PRIME)
Integrating data from a large subject sample, we are exploring the causal relationships between message features, message sharing, and behavior change, as well as exploring the impact of cross-cultural factors.
BB-PRIME Phase II — Climate Change Interventions
How can we motivate people to share information about climate change and take action to address it? We’re testing and comparing psychological interventions using an intervention tournament approach to identify which strategies work best, and for whom.
GeoScan Smoking Study
We aim to help prevent cancer by understanding how tobacco marketing influences the brains of smokers, taking into account where they encounter it in their daily lives using a mixture of Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA; many short surveys throughout the day), geolocation tracking, and brain scanning.
Video
Get to know members of our lab and their work.
A video profile of Emily Falk, Ph.D., and her research.
Graduate student Prateekshit Pandey talks about how the brain reacts to humor.
Dr. Falk explains research showing how fMRI from small groups of people can predict large-scale behavior.
Lab alum Christin Scholz describes her work during her time as a graduate student.
Collaborating to Advance Health Communication
As a generation of pioneering scholars retired, several new hires are working together to continue Annenberg’s legacy as a leader in Health Communication.
