Shawn Rhoads, PhD

Lab Website | Personal Website | Google Scholar | MSSM Profile | Bluesky | Twitter

Dr. Rhoads is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He earned his baccalaureate degree from the University of Southern California and Ph.D. from Georgetown University. As the Principal Investigator of the Social Interaction & Neural Computation Laboratory (SINC Lab), his research program has two primary goals. The first is to establish a comprehensive framework for understanding factors that improve or impair the well-being of the self and others across multiple levels of analysis (e.g., neurobiological, cognitive, behavioral, interpersonal, societal). The second is to translate this understanding for direct application in medicine and policy.

His laboratory uses an integrative methodological approach that combines computational cognitive modeling, functional neuroimaging, and direct intracranial electrophysiological recordings in humans. A core focus is to build computational models of dynamic social interactions and neural dynamics to uncover how the brain represents others’ mental states, supports social learning and decision-making, and gives rise to shared emotional experiences. His research particularly focuses on understanding individual differences in social cognition, the impact of loneliness and social context on mental health, and how disruptions in these processes contribute to psychopathology. By moving beyond highly constrained laboratory tasks toward more naturalistic, ecologically valid settings, this work also aims to generate clinically relevant insights into why social difficulties emerge and how they might be addressed.

Major research questions include: What neural and computational processes underlie individual differences in social perception, learning, and decision-making? What drives variability and alignment in shared emotional experiences? How do we represent and understand others’ internal states (i.e., their emotions, beliefs, goals)? How do prosocial and antisocial behaviors impact interpersonal relationships? How does loneliness impact these processes and affect mental health? Under what conditions do external social factors (e.g., context, community, broader societal structures) impact individuals' internal states, including their subjective well-being?