An EconoTimes perspective

Pascal Vrticka

Lecturer in Psychology, University of Essex

Lecturer in Psychology, University of Essex Dr Pascal Vrticka is a social neuroscientist. His research investigates the behavioural, biological, and brain basis of human social interaction. Besides measuring how the human body and brain respond to different kinds of social versus non-social information in single participants, Dr Vrticka most recently started to assess bio-behavioural synchrony in interacting pairs. The main question thereby is how strangers, romantic partners, and parents with their children get "in sync" with each other when they solve problems together or talk to each other. Dr Vrticka furthermore relates the obtained individual and dyadic behavioural, biological, and brain measures to interindividual differences in relationship quality, attachment, and caregiving. In doing so, he refers to attachment theory that provides a suitable theoretical framework on how we initiate and maintain social relationships across the life span. With his research, Dr Vrticka is promoting a new field of investigation named the social neuroscience of human attachment.