Early in her scientific career, Jaiswal worked at the molecular level and, for her master's thesis, investigated biomarkers of sleep deprivation in zebrafish. "This got me interested in wanting to understand the neural underpinnings of behavior, especially in humans," she notes. During the early stages of her PhD at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) she was first drawn to human motor behavior, studying how the brain produces the delicate movements necessary for writing. At Srikanth Padmala’s lab at the IISc she then shifted her focus to studying factors that influence our everyday behavior – reward and emotion – through the lens of imaging techniques. This started her fascination for the neural and cognitive processes that integrate conflicting emotional signals.
Marius Lange Bad work, but good pay?
This fascination led her to a new research question: How does the brain handle opposing signals – like a negative visual cue leading to a monetary reward? Or, in more common terms, how do we react when we for example have to work a job under particularly unpleasant conditions, but with really good pay? "In everyday life negative emotional events often coexist alongside rewarding opportunities," Jaiswal explains. "My goal was to understand how the brain computes such conflicting information, where the value associated with emotional events is integrated with that of monetary incentives and thus, impacts motivation and experiences".
From animal collectives to human social behavior
A new interest crystalized in the later stages of her PhD: social cognition. And through the cooperation with Raymundo Baez Mendoza, Head at the DPZ Social Neurobiology Early-Career Research Group, she can now fuse her experience in reward-driven behavior with his expertise on social interaction. In particular, she wants to investigate how social factors influence how humans value information and how this information is shared amongst individuals. These research questions were inspired from observations in the wild. From murmuration in starlings and social schooling in fish to synchronized blinking in fireflies: Elegant social behavior finetuned for the benefit of the entire group exists across the animal kingdom. Yet, we as humans tend to gossip, spread misinformation or even lie. "Why is that the case?" Jaiswal explains, describing her research interest.
Ewald Fröch - stock.adobe.com Anticipation vs outcome – different processes, different disorders, different solutions
Generating fundamental insights on the mechanisms of socially and emotionally modulated reward-driven behavior is crucial for the development of future personalized therapies. Two distinct psychological contexts become especially important here: reward anticipation and outcome. While anticipation is preparatory, the outcome is the actual experiential stage of reward processing. And while both always work in tandem, they rely on partially distinct cognitive and neural mechanisms. Furthermore, these mechanisms can also be uniquely impaired without influencing the other.
Bipolar disorder, for example, affects reward anticipation while reward experience stays mostly intact, yet the reverse is true for certain types of depression. "A better understanding of human social behavior and the underlying brain mechanisms could eventually lead to better therapeutic interventions for neurodevelopmental disorders and more informed welfare policies", Jaiswal explains.
Her 24-month Humboldt Fellowship will include studies on human information processing with a focus on emotional, social and reward-driven behavioral factors. A collaboration with Anne Schacht, Professor for Cognition, Emotion and Behavior at the University of Göttingen is already planned. We are excited for the new insights on human information processing that Sagarika Jaiswal’s work will bring to Göttingen, the DPZ and the worldwide research community!