Aggression is not only learned through direct experience—it can also spread socially. In a process known as socially transmitted aggression, individuals acquire aggressive behavior simply by observing others, particularly familiar peers. This form of observational learning provides a powerful model for understanding how harmful behaviors propagate through social networks.

In this project, we study how witnessing aggression alters brain circuits to promote aggressive behavior in the observer. Using preclinical models we developed, we show that socially transmitted aggression depends on specific limbic and hypothalamic circuits involved in threat processing and social behavior. These circuits become especially sensitive when aggression is observed in familiar individuals, highlighting the importance of social context in shaping behavioral outcomes.

By combining behavioral assays with in vivo electrophysiology, fiber photometry, optogenetics, and circuit-specific manipulations, we aim to identify how social experience transforms neural activity to bias individuals toward aggression. This work seeks to define the neural mechanisms by which aggression spreads through peer groups, rather than emerging solely from individual predispositions.

Understanding how aggressive behavior is socially learned has broad relevance for real-world challenges, including adolescent violence, peer-driven risk behaviors, and the social contagion of harmful actions.