The study of social behavior has become a major focus of research interest. Humans are a social species and almost all of their behaviors – as well as the mechanism that supported them – are related to the interaction with other human beings. Our current understanding of social behavior has revealed the necessity to develop interdisciplinary tools in order to enhance our knowledge and find more integrative models for important human problems that involve social behaviors. Some of these tools have been generated through the interaction among several disciplines which includes (but is not limited to) social sciences (such as, anthropology, economics and psychology), biological sciences (neurosciences) and exact sciences (applied mathematics and physics). In this context, an important field where these interactions have the potentiality to give advances in important yet unsolved problems is in the study of neuropsychiatric diseases. In this line, several neurological and psychiatric illnesses present import impairments in social skills. These impartments impact the quality of life and the proper integration of neuropsychiatric patients in society. Moreover, the identification and definition of most of these disorders are closely related to abnormal social behaviors.

The aim of this research topic is twofold: 1) to contribute to the discussion and the elaboration of theoretical and methodological interfaces among different disciplines that study the social phenomena, 2) to present the results of interdisciplinary studies of social behavior, discussing their potential strengths and pitfalls together with their implications for the diagnosis and treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders. Hence, this research topic calls for all types of contributions (original studies, reviews, theoretical discussions, opinion articles) having an interdisciplinary approach to the study of social behavior with a special focus on those works that deal with the applications of these tools to neuropsychiatric disorders.

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