Dr Vrticka’s most recent blog posts
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What is Attachment? A Social Neuroscience Perspective
“From a social neuroscience perspective, there are two key principles associated with human attachment behaviours: i) conserving energy resources and ii) making predictions about available support and how costly it is to obtain it. These two key principles are intrinsically linked with one another.” A blog post with the title “What is Attachment? A Social… Read more
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Synced brains: how to bond with your kids – according to neuroscience
Coordinated brains. Jacob Lund/Shutterstock Pascal Vrticka, University of Essex Many people across the world are still living under tough restrictions or lockdowns because of the pandemic, staying home as much as possible. This means that a lot of parents are spending more time than ever with their children. But how do you turn… Read more
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How to stay socially connected as lockdown returns – according to science
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Pascal Vrticka, University of Essex and Philip J. Cozzolino, University of Essex After a fairly relaxed summer, more and more places are bringing back tighter restrictions in response to rising COVID-19 cases, with some even returning to full or… Read more
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SoNeAt Workshop 2020 – A Virtual Conference on Attachment and Social Neuroscience
On August 12th and 13th 2020, 150 attachment researchers, psychologists, therapists, nurses, and members of non-profit organisations from around the globe (all the way from the west coast of Canada to central Australia) met during a virtual workshop with the title “70 Years of Attachment Research: A Multidisciplinary Social Neuroscience Perspective“. Workshop participants discussed the… Read more
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Brains get “in sync” when mothers and children talk to each other
Engaging in a conversation is a highly complex social task with many implications for child development and wellbeing. The promotion of turn-taking during parent-child conversation is known to lead to higher social interaction quality. Conversely, low coordination and turn-taking during parent-child conversation are linked with atypical language development and other developmental difficulties in children. But… Read more
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Mother and child brains synchronize during problem solving
What happens in the brains of mothers and children when they are solving a puzzle together – do their brain waves become synchronized to one another? And how is such neural synchrony influenced by mother-child behavior and thus relationship quality? We set out to study these questions in a collaborative effort between the University of… Read more
Dr Pascal Vrticka (PhD, FHEA) 