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Jim Coan – Our Social Baseline

mlipodcast · December 12, 2024 ·

December 12, 2024

View or download a transcript of this episode

In this episode, Wendy speaks with psychologist and affective neuroscientist Jim Coan. Jim is a leading researcher on how social connection impacts our minds, brains, and bodies, and he’s also pushing the boundaries of impactful science communication. This conversation covers many topics, including:

Jim Coan, PhD
  • studying relationships and emotions in the brain;
  • how a confusing research finding changed his career;
  • how holding hands impacts our bodies and minds;
  • understanding energy regulation and prediction;
  • social baseline theory;
  • the prefrontal cortex and self-regulation;
  • implications for the default mode network;
  • social support as energetic resources for the body;
  • effects of hand holding on pain processing;
  • introversion and social support;
  • the two things all his students must memorize;
  • the costs and benefits of social interactions;
  • implications for loss of relationship;
  • sense of self, belonging, and the importance of supporting others;
  • communicating science through comics;
  • and surviving—even flourishing—through climate change.

Jim Coan, PhD, is Professor of Clinical Psychology and Director of the Virginia Affective Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Virginia. His work emphasizes the study of neural systems supporting emotion, emotion-regulation and, critically, the social regulation of emotion. He developed Social Baseline Theory, a framework that explores how humans are wired for social connection and the ways in which relationships are integral to health and well-being. An entertaining speaker, he brings cutting edge insights to business and research audiences around the world, and his work has been featured in many major media outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Time Magazine, New Yorker, The Atlantic, BBC News, Discovery Channel, New Scientist, Scientific American, CBS Sunday Morning, and others. Jim received the inaugural Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions from the Association for Psychological Science, and the Award for Distinguished Early Career Contributions from the Society for Psychophysiological Research. He is also host of the Circle of Willis podcast, and a writer and illustrator of science comics.

Resources

Faculty page at University of Virginia
Virginia Affective Neuroscience Lab & publications
Jim’s Substack

  • Paper: Social Baseline Theory: The Social Regulation of Risk and Effort, Current Opinion in Psychology, 2014.
  • Paper: Relationship status and perceived support in the social regulation of neural threat responding. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2017.
  • Paper: Brain mechanisms of social touch-induced analgesia in females, PAIN, 2019.
  • Paper: Lending a hand: Social regulation of the neural response to threat. Psychological Science, 2006.
  • Podcast: Circle of Willis
  • Comic: The Self and the Other (see more on Jim’s Substack)

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