About Dr Pascal Vrticka

Short biography

Dr Pascal Vrticka researches the social neuroscience of human attachment (SoNeAt): how caregiving, bonding and social connection are supported by brain, body and behaviour across the lifespan.

Dr Vrticka is currently Associate Professor (Senior Lecturer) at the Centre for Brain Science, Department of Psychology, University of Essex (Colchester, UK) where he is the Principal Investigator of the Social Neuroscience of Human Attachment (SoNeAt) Lab. He furthermore acts as Coordinating Board President of the Special Interest Research Group “Social Neuroscience of Human Attachment” (SIRG SoNeAt) situated within the Society for Emotion and Attachment Studies (SEAS) where he acts as the Scientific Secretary and Member of the Executive Board (2020-present). In addition, since 2022, Dr Vrticka is an Associate Trustee of the UK registered Charity Babygro.

The SoNeAt Lab is currently running two studies on interpersonal neural and bio-behavioural synchrony in parents and students: TRIO and SWITCH. The SWITCH study is embedded within a large-scale, longitudinal and international project across five universities in four European countries funded with EUR 1.5 million by CHANSE and Norface. Another study, LEAD, is looking at leader-follower relationships associated with the attachment-informed leadership (AIL) framework.

Together with Babygro, Dr Vrticka is working towards making his attachment research accessible for a wider audience, and particularly to parents and organisations working with them. As part of this collaboration, a free book for parents is now available. Dr Vrticka is furthermore engaging in the public understanding of science by promoting a mutual discussion across domains to resolve the most prevalent attachment confusion and misconceptions as part of his “Attachment Insights” series and his “Attachment Science with Dr Pascal Vrticka” series on Substack.

Dr Vrticka studied biochemistry and neurobiology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich (Switzerland) to earn a combined BA & MA in Science – Biology (1999-2005). In his MA dissertation project, he investigated “Doxycycline as an anti-apoptotic substance in two in vitro models of Alzheimer’s disease” under the joint supervision of Prof Martin Schwab (University of Zurich, Switzerland) and Prof Yoo-Hun Suh (Seoul National University, South Korea). Dr Vrticka then moved to the Swiss Center for Affective Sciences hosted by the University of Geneva (Switzerland) where he obtained a PhD in (social) neuroscience under the supervision of Prof Patrik Vuilleumier (2006-2009). His PhD dissertation had the title: “Social neuroscience of emotion perception and regulation: the influence of context and individual differences“.

After two years as a postdoctoral researcher at the Swiss Center for Affective Sciences in association with the Faculty of Psychology, University of Geneva (Switzerland) and Prof David Sander (2010-2011), Dr Vrticka moved to Stanford School of Medicine (California, USA). Thanks to a fellowship for advanced researchers from the Swiss National Science Foundation, he was able to secure a position as postdoctoral scholar with Prof Allan Reiss at the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences (2012-2014). Moving back to Europe, Dr Vrticka further advanced his research programme at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig (Germany), where he held several positions as a Research Scientist, Group Leader, and Senior Scientist. During this time, he actively collaborated with the University of Leipzig (Faculty of Life Sciences, University Clinic, and Leipzig Research Center for Early Child Development) in both teaching and student supervision, and obtained extensive funding for several large multidisciplinary research projects by the Max Planck Society (2014-2020).

A short current CV can be found here.

Additional information