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Key Topics and Guiding Questions
Click on the drop-down menu to see selected publications per topic
Ultimate and proximate mechanisms of prosociality in humans
- What are the genetic, hormonal, neural mechanisms and contextual factors that promote prosociality?
- How did prosociality evolve and spread across human groups, and what's the role of genes and culture?
Selected publication
Lee, M., & Gonzalez, MZ. (2025). Asymmetric access to social- vs. economic resources during development calibrates socio-cognitive pathways to risk-taking in emerging adults. Cerebral Cortex, 35(7), bhaf169. (https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhaf169)
Lee, M., Gonzalez, A., & Rilling, JK (2025). Grandmaternal caregiving is associated with a distinct multi-voxel neural signature of grandchildren in the parental motivation circuits, Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 20(1), nsaf034. (https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsaf034)
Rilling, JK., Lee, M., Zhou, C., Jung, E, Arrant, E., Davenport-Nicholson, A., & Ethun, K. (2025). Hormonal changes in first-time human fathers and their relation to paternal investment, Hormones and Behavior, 171, 105740. (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yhbeh.2025.105740)
Rilling, JK., Lee, M., Zhou, C., Gonzalez, A., & Lindo, J. (2024). Grandmotherhood is associated with reduced OXTR DNA methylation. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 168, 107122. (Editor’s Choice, 2024). (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2024.107122)
Lee, M., Lindo, J., & Rilling, JK. (2022). Exploring gene-culture coevolution in humans by inferring neuroendophenotypes: a case study of the oxytocin receptor gene and cultural tightness, Genes, Brain and Behavior, 21(3), e12783. (Top-downloaded Article Award by Wiley, Among the top 10% most-downloaded article in 2022-2023) (https://doi.org/10.1111/gbb.12783)
Lee, M., Sul, S., & Kim, H. (2018). Social observation increases deontological judgments in moral dilemmas, Evolution and Human Behavior, 39(6), 611-621. (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2018.06.004)
Health benefits of caregiving for both caregivers and care recipients
- What are the pathway through which social support enhances health?
- How does the loss of supportive social connection affect our cognition, emotion, behaviors and health?s
- Does caring for others make our brain healthier?
Selected publication
Lee, M., & Brown, C.K. (In preparation). Social support provision is associated with lower brain age: Evidence from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) Study.
Lee, M., & Rilling J.K. Oxytocin and the Pace of Life History Strategies: From Evolutionary Trade-Offs to Translational Pathways (2025). Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2025.106457).
Rilling, JK., Lee, M., Zhou, C., Perkins, M., Hepburn, K., & Gaser, C. (2025). Caregiving is associated with lower brain age in humans. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 20(1), nsaf013. (https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsaf013)
Lee, M., Lori, A., Langford, N., & Rilling, JK. (2022). Enhanced endogenous oxytocin signaling in the brain modulates neural responses to social misalignment and promotes conformity in humans: a multi-locus genetic profile approach, Psychoneuroendocrinology, 144, 105869. (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2022.105869)
Costs of altruism and strategies to mitigate them
- What causes caregiving stress, and can we mitigate it?
- How can we accurately measure and predict the quality of caregivers-patient relationship?
Selected publication
Lee M., Cox, C., & Brown, C.K. (In Preparation). The impacts of social proximity and co-experience on stress response to infant crying.
Lee, M., & Gonzalez, MZ. Resilience through regulation: Individual differences in inhibitory control shape neural and psychological responses to ostracism (2025), Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience. (https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-025-01354-5 )
Rilling, JK., Lee, M., McIsaac, J., Gallagher, P., Kim, J., Zhou, C., McDade, TW., Hepburn, K., & Perkins, M. (2024). Evaluation of photo captioning cognitive empathy intervention for dementia caregivers. Clinical Gerontologist, 47(5), 832-845. (https://doi.org/10.1080/07317115.2024.2317972)
Rahman, B., Lee, M., & Rilling, JK. (2023). Frustration responses of single and partnered mothers to prolonged infant crying, Journal of Family Psychology. 37(5), 699–708. (https://doi.org/10.1037/fam0001077)
Skills
I use controlled behavioral or neuroimaging experiments, genotyping, epigenetic analysis, hormonal assays, self-report survey, structured interview, and population genetic methods to address my research questions. Click below to learn more about skills I have first-hand experiences in:
Neuroimaging and Behavioral Experiments
Neuroimaging and Behavioral Experiments
I have extensive experience designing and conducting controlled behavioral and neuroimaging experiments; working with non-student, at-risk populations such as first-time fathers, grandmothers, and dementia caregivers; and analyzing data using various tools, including SPM, FSL, and FreeSurfer.
Survey design and implementation
Survey design and implementation
I am proficient in designing and implementing in-person or online surveys, as well as implementing behavioral experiments on platforms such as SurveyMonkey, Qualtrics, MTurk, and Pavlovia etc.
Qualitative data curation and analysis
Qualitative data curation and analysis
I am skilled in designing and conducting structured interviews, transcribing the data, text mining, and performing thematic analysis using tools such as MAXQDA.
Programming
Programming
I'm skilled in skilled in MATLAB, R, Python, bash, SPSS, and JASP for data cleaning, analysis, computaitonal modeling and visualization.
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