A long-standing goal in neuroscience is to understand how the nervous system interprets salient information from the external world and generates appropriate behaviors. In social environments, an individual’s ability to adaptively respond to social stimuli is critical for facilitating behaviors necessary for reproduction and survival. Although most animals are capable of adjusting social behaviors depending on their encountered social stimuli and internal states, we are only beginning to understand the underlying neural circuits and how are they shaped by genetic predispositions, development, past experience and disease. Combining multi-disciplinary approaches, our laboratory uses both rodent and non-human primate models to understand the neural mechanisms involved in the generation of adaptive social behaviors.