State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University

Faculty

Current Faculty

Yin Wang Ph.D.Social Neuroscience and Computational Social Science yin.wang#bnu.edu.cn www.mirrorneuronwang.com

Educational Experience

2008-2012 PhD in Psychology, University of Nottingham, UK

2004-2008 Bachelor in Biological Engineering, Shanghai University, China

Professional Experience

2025-now Full Professor, State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, and IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University

2019-2025 Associate Professor, State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, and IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University

2015-2019 Postdoctoral Research Associate, Temple University, USA

2013-2015 Postdoctoral Researcher, New York University, USA

2011-2013 ESRC Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Nottingham, UK

Research Description

Dr. Yin Wang is currently the Director of Multimodal Social Neuroscience (MSN) Lab and Principle Investigator in State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, and IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University. His research focuses on social neuroscience and computational social science, with a long-term aim to uncover the fundamental principles of human social behavior and its neural and cognitive bases. By integrating approaches from behavioral science, cognitive science, neuroscience, computational science, and artificial intelligence, his work seeks to elucidate the conceptual representations of social intelligence, psychological and behavioral patterns, computational foundations of cognition, and multiscale neural mechanisms of the social brain. He also develops methods for detecting and intervening in social dysfunctions such as autism, prosopagnosia, social anxiety, and conduct problems, while contributing to the alignment of artificial intelligence with human values. His research has been published in high-profile journals such as Nature Human Behaviour, PNAS, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, NeuroImage, and Journal of Neuroscience.

Publications

1. Fu, M., Chen, G., Zhang, Y., Zhang, M., Wang, Y. (2025) Comprehensive neural representations of naturalistic stimuli through multimodal deep learning. eLife,14:RP107607

2. Cheng, X., Popal, H., Wang, H., Hu, R., Zang, Y., Zhang, M., Thornton, M.A., Ma, Y., Cai, H., Bi, Y., Reilly, J., Olson, I.R., & Wang, Y. (2025) The conceptual structure of human relationships across modern and historical cultures. Nature Human Behaviour, 9(6):1162-1175.

3. Luo, S., Yuan, H., Wang, Y., & Bond, M.H. (2024) Culturomics: Taking the cross-scale, interdisciplinary science of culture into the next decade. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 167:105942

4. Fan, S., Wang, Y., Wang, Y., & Zang, Y. (2024) Revisiting resting-state functional connectivity of the amygdala and subgenual anterior cingulate cortex in depressed adolescents and adults. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, S2451-9022(24)00341

5. Chang, D., Wang, X., Chen, Y., Han, Z., Wang, Y., Liu, B., Zhang, Z., Zuo, X. (2024) Older is order: entropy reduction in cortical spontaneous activity marks healthy aging. BMC Neuroscience, 25(1):74.

6. Chen, G., Gao, X., Yan, X., Du, M., Zang, Y., & Wang, Y. (2023) Online research in psychology and its future in China. Journal of Psychological Science. 46(5):1262-1271

7. Olson, I.R., Hoffman, L.J., Jobson, K.R., Popal, H., & Wang, Y. (2023) Little brain, little minds: The big role of the cerebellum in social development. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 60:101238

8. Metoki, A., Wang, Y., & Olson, I.R. (2021) The social cerebellum: a large-scale investigation of functional and structural specificity and connectivity. Cerebral Cortex. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhab260

9. Wang, Y., Metoki, A., Xia, Y., Zang, Y., He, Y., & Olson, I.R. (2021) A large-scale structural and functional connectome of social mentalizing. NeuroImage, 236:118115

10. Asadi, N., Wang, Y., Olson, I.R. & Obradovic, Z. (2020) A heuristic information cluster search approach for precise functional brain mapping. Human Brain Mapping, 41:2263–2280

11. Wang, Y., Metoki, A., Smith, D.V., Medaglia, J.D., Zang, Y., Benear, S., Popal, H., Lin, Y., & Olson, I.R. (2020). Multimodal mapping of the face connectome. Nature Human Behaviour, 4:397-411.

12. Popal, H., Wang, Y., & Olson, I.R. (2019). A guide to representational similarity analysis for social neuroscience. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience,14(11):1243-1253.

13. Wang, Y., Schubert, T.W., & Quadflieg, S. (2019). Behavioral and neural evidence for an evaluative bias against other people’s mundane interracial encounters. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 14(12):1329-1339.

14. Wang, Y., Metoki, A., Alm, K.H., Olson, I.R. (2018). White matter pathways and social cognition. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 90: 350-370.

15. Wang, Y., Olson, I.R. (2018). The original social network: white matter and social cognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 22(6): 504-516.

16. Metoki, A., Alm, K.H., Wang, Y., Ngo, C.T., & Olson, I.R. (2017). Never forget a name: white matter connectivity predicts person memory. Brain Structure and Function. 222:4187-4201.

17. Wang, Y., Collins, J. A., Koski, J., Nugiel, T., Metoki, A., Olson, I.R. (2017). A dynamic neural architecture for social knowledge retrieval. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 114(16): E3305–E3314.

18. Prinsen, J., Bernaerts, S., Wang, Y., de Beukelaar, T.T., Cuypers, K., Swinnen, S.P., & Alaerts, K. (2017). Direct eye contact enhances mirroring of others' movements: A transcranial magnetic stimulation study. Neuropsychologia, 95:111-118.

19. Forbes, P., Wang, Y., & Hamilton, A. (2016). STORMy Interactions: gaze and the modulation of mimicry in adults on the autism spectrum. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 24:529-535.

20. Wang, Y., & Quadflieg, S. (2015). In our own image? Emotional and neural processing differences when observing human-human versus human-robot interactions. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 10 (11): 1515-1524.

21. Wang, Y., Thomas, J., Weissgerber, S. C., Kazemini, S., Ul-Haq, I., & Quadflieg, S. (2015). The headscarf effect re-visited: further evidence for a culture-based internal face processing advantage. Perception, 44(3):328–336.

22. Wang, Y., & Hamilton, A. (2015). Anterior medial prefrontal cortex implements social priming of mimicry. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 10(4):486-493.

23. Wang, Y., & Hamilton, A. (2014). Why does gaze enhance mimicry? Placing gaze-mimicry effects in relation to other gaze phenomena. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 67(4):747-762.

24. Wang, Y., & Hamilton, A. (2013). Understanding the role of the ‘self’ in the social priming of mimicry. PLoS One. 8(4):e60249.

25. Wang, Y., & Hamilton, A. (2012). Social top-down response modulation (STORM)—a model of the control of mimicry in social interaction. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 6:153.

26. Wang, Y., Ramsey, R., & Hamilton, A. (2011). The control of mimicry by eye contact is mediated by medial prefrontal cortex. The Journal of Neuroscience, 31(33): 12001-12010.

27. Wang, Y., Newport, R., & Hamilton, A. (2011). Eye contact enhances mimicry of intransitive hand movements. Biology Letters, 7:7-10.