Blog Posts

Dr Vrticka’s most recent blog posts

  • Sex-Differences in Humor Processing: Potential Implications for Human Mate Choice?

    Sex-Differences in Humor Processing: Potential Implications for Human Mate Choice?

    This blog post first appeared on http://thepeoplesscience.org/ on October 29, 2016. A good sense of humor is a highly valued human mate preference worldwide. If people are asked to rate the importance of various traits of a potential partner, humor is often found at, or near the top of their list. Humor sometimes ranks even higher than… Read more

  • Attachment Style and Brain Activity in Adolescents

    Attachment Style and Brain Activity in Adolescents

    This blog post first appeared on www.huffingtonpost.com on July 31, 2014, and has since been edited. Adolescence is a critical time period during human social-emotional development. It is generally associated with changes in teenagers’ brain structure and function, as well as behavior. There is, however, also a major environmental change occurring during adolescence that is less frequently… Read more

  • The Neural Signature of Attachment Insecurity

    The Neural Signature of Attachment Insecurity

    This blog post first appeared on www.huffingtonpost.com on October 16, 2013, and has since been edited. In one of my previous blog posts on human social brain evolution, I already briefly mentioned the concept of attachment and individual differences in attachment orientation. Here, I would like to elaborate on these considerations by describing in more detail… Read more

  • Tickling the Child Brain

    Tickling the Child Brain

    This blog post first appeared on www.huffingtonpost.com on October 2, 2013. Not too long ago, there was a vivid debate on the evolutionary origins and function of humor in humans (HuffPost TEDWeekends; see here, here and here). I do agree that these are important questions to ask. I do also agree that, in order to answer these questions, we need… Read more

  • Evolution of the ‘Social Brain’ in Humans: What Are the Benefits and Costs of Belonging to a Social Species?

    Evolution of the ‘Social Brain’ in Humans: What Are the Benefits and Costs of Belonging to a Social Species?

    This blog post first appeared on http://www.huffingtonpost.com on September 16, 2013, and has since been edited. Humans are highly social beings. We like to be surrounded by friends and share our personal experiences with others. The recent appearance of various social networking tools, and their adoption at a virtually explosive rate, nicely illustrate the strong… Read more