![(Un)social rats: the role of dopamine and the amygdala in social adversity dopamine-amygdala-social-adversity](https://www.noldus.com/static/images/core-blog/dopamine-amygdala-social-adversity-1663765525.jpg)
(Un)social rats: the role of dopamine and the amygdala in social adversity
With optogenetics and behavioral testing, researchers found a link between infant social adversity and decreased social behavior in the circuitry of the amygdala.
![5 examples of infant studies infant-studies](https://www.noldus.com/static/images/core-blog/infant-studies-1591707463.jpg)
5 examples of infant studies
Researchers perform infant studies to properly monitor and understand all kinds of development factors. In this blog post, five examples of infant studies are highlighted.
![How does communication with strangers develop? emotional-communication-infants](https://www.noldus.com/static/images/core-blog/emotional-communication-infants-1654773675.jpg)
How does communication with strangers develop?
Various factors contribute to shaping social-emotional developmental trajectories, such as familiarity of the interaction partner, the child’s age, but also individual predispositions, such as temperament.
![Early infant behavior development of hand preference measuring-hand-preference-infancy](https://www.noldus.com/static/images/core-blog/measuring-hand-preference-infancy-1648630721.jpg)
Early infant behavior development of hand preference
There are many reasons to study the development of hand preference in infants. For one thing, being left-handed can be an advantage in one-on-one sports such as tennis.
![Five studies showing the power of multi-modal data in behavioral research multimodal-data](https://www.noldus.com/static/images/core-blog/multimodal-data-1637658053.jpg)
Five studies showing the power of multi-modal data in behavioral research
The advantages of using multimodal data over a single modality are that it reveals deeper insights and also if one modality fails there can be enough redundancy in the data to still make sense of it.
![Anxiety and Autism anxiety-and-autism](https://www.noldus.com/static/images/core-blog/anxiety-and-autism-1636548381.jpg)
Anxiety and Autism
The EU-AIMS and AIMS-2-TRIALS projects have carried out some interesting studies teasing out the causes of anxiety in children with autism.
![Challenging play behavior: does it still exist? analyzing-challenging-play-behavior](https://www.noldus.com/static/images/core-blog/analyzing-challenging-play-behavior.jpg)
Challenging play behavior: does it still exist?
Although children tend to spend more time indoor in sitting activities, they need feelings of exhilaration for behavioral development. Researchers investigated how risky play behavior can be encouraged.
![How does handedness relate to infant language development? observing-analyzing-infants-handedness-language-abilities](https://www.noldus.com/static/images/core-blog/observing-analyzing-infants-handedness-language-abilities-1617710121.jpg)
How does handedness relate to infant language development?
Developing motor skills appears to be related to language abilities. The research team of Sandy Gonzalez investigated whether consistency in handedness predicts receptive and expressive language.
![Observing and analyzing repetitive movements in infants to detect autism repetitive-movements-infants-detect-autism](https://www.noldus.com/static/images/core-blog/repetitive-movements-infants-detect-autism.jpg)
Observing and analyzing repetitive movements in infants to detect autism
To examine if a specific repertoire of repetitive movements was present in children with autism, researchers used home videos to code the behaviors of the infants.
![The role of mimicry in the development of social communication role-mimicry-development-social-communication](https://www.noldus.com/static/images/core-blog/role-mimicry-development-social-communication.jpg)
The role of mimicry in the development of social communication
Children learn from interacting with others, especially their parents. For example, reproducing the emotions that others express is part of that.