Attachment fMRI Neuroscience Psychology

Is your brain securely attached? Part I: What’s the brain got to do with it?

It’s now been about twenty years since I embarked on my scientific journey to study the Social Neuroscience of Human Attachment (SoNeAt).

This series with the overarching title “Is your brain securely attached?” is a reflection of my journey: how everything started, the challenges and achievements it entailed, the insights it revealed, whom I met along the way and where I think SoNeAt may be heading next. Although not necessarily in that exact order. And very likely with lots of nerdy detours in between.

Well then, here we go…!

Part I: What’s the brain got to do with it?

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Dr Pascal Vrticka is a social neuroscientist with strong ties to developmental & social psychology. His research focuses on the psychological, behavioural, biological, and brain basis of human social interaction, attachment and caregiving. Besides measuring neurobiological responses to different kinds of social versus non-social information in single participants using (functional) magnetic resonance imaging ([f]MRI) and electroencephalography (EEG), Dr Vrticka most recently started to assess bio-behavioural synchrony in interacting pairs using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning. The main question thereby is how romantic partners and parents with their children get “in sync” 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 – particularly attachment and caregiving. In doing so, he refers to attachment theory that provides a suitable theoretical framework on how we initiate and maintain interpersonal relationships across the life span. With his research, Dr Vrticka is promoting a new area of investigation: the social neuroscience of human attachment.

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