Boch, Magdalena

What makes us social? My research explores how social abilities emerge in the brain and how they evolved. 

Despite the enormous diversity of mammalian brains – from smooth mouse brains to highly folded dolphin brains – many species share remarkably similar social abilities. By studying how different brains support social behaviour, I investigate how social abilities evolved across mammals and how the human brain adapted to increasingly complex social worlds. 

My research compares the human brain with that of domestic dogs and their wild relatives. By combining methods from neuroscience, psychology, and behavioural research, I study how social abilities emerge in the brain – from individual brain regions to the networks through which they communicate. 

To pursue this work, I develop new methods for comparative neuroscience, including non-invasive neuroimaging techniques for dogs and large-scale comparative brain datasets across many mammalian species. This allows me to investigate how brain structure and function relate to social behaviour and ecology across species.

• Social neuroscience
• Evolution of social cognition and behaviour
• Psychology of human-animal interaction
• Neuroecology
• Comparative neuroimaging methods

• 2017 M.Sc. in Psychology, University of Vienna, Austria
• 2017-2022 Graduate student, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Austria
• 2021-2022 ÖAD Marietta Blau predoctoral fellow, Oxford Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging (OxCIN), University of Oxford, UK
• 2022 Dr. rer. nat. in Psychology, University of Vienna, Austria
• 2022-2024 Postdoctoral researcher, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Austria & OxCIN, University of Oxford, UK
• 2024 L’Oréal & UNESCO Postdoctoral Fellow, OxCIN, University of Oxford, UK and University of Vienna, Austria
• 2025-2026 FWF Erwin Schrödinger Postdoctoral Fellow, OxCIN, University of Oxford, UK
• since June 2026 Tenure-track professorship for Social Cognition and Head of the Social Neuroecology Lab, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna and Messerli Research Institute, Vienna, Austria