Dorit Kliemann, assistant professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, received a $3,105,656 grant from the National Institutes of Health for her project, titled “The causal role of the medial prefrontal cortex in human social cognition." 

This project builds on prior work that has identified a network of brain regions involved in human social cognition and is specifically focusing on the role of one of these regions in this network: the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC). By using a novel combination of lesion models and computational approaches to behavioral and neuroimaging data the researchers hope to provide a brain network-based framework of MPFC’s role in social cognition.   

Kliemann and her collaborators will study social behavior of hundreds of patients with focal brain lesions, their brain anatomy, and brain function, and compare it to people without any brain lesions. 

“As an early career scientist, securing a five-year grant for my lab for a large project like this is vital for my research program,” Kliemann said. 

Kliemann’s research program is positioned at the intersection of psychology and neuroscience of human social behavior. Her research focuses on the neurobiological basis of social cognition. With behavioral and neuroimaging methods, her team studies how the brain enables us to think about other people’s thoughts, emotions and intentions. 

Her research helps people understand abnormalities in the brain and behavior when people have difficulty with social cognition, for example in autism spectrum disorder or after brain lesions.  

Beyond the basic scientific insights from this research about how the human brain works, Kliemann’s research may help identify markers for atypical social cognition in psychiatric and neurological conditions. In the long term, these insights will facilitate the development of new interventions to help people with difficulty in social cognition.  

Kliemann has laid the groundwork for this project study since her arrival at the university in 2020. She has established the necessary interdisciplinary collaborations across the campus to include patients with focal brain lesions from the Iowa Neurological Brain Registry and collected pilot data in part funded by the Iowa Neuroscience Institute Research Programs of Excellence  and the OVPR Early Career Scholars Program.  

“I am very excited to receive funding for research vital to my lab’s program,” Kliemann said. “This research is made possible by the incredibly collaborative environment in psychology and neuroscience at the University of Iowa, especially in my department and the Iowa Neuroscience Institute.”