Scientific Advisors

Berntson, Gary G., Ph.D.

Professor, Departments of Psychology, Psychiatry, and Pediatrics

The broad interest of my research program is in the elucidation of the functional organization of brain mechanisms underlying behavioral and affective processes, with a special emphasis on social neuroscience. The program is guided conceptually by a recognition of the importance of multiple levels of analyses in a meaningful understanding of complex neurobehavioral relations, and the strategic approach is collaborative and multidisciplinary in nature. This is illustrated by current research on anxiety and autonomic control, which ranges from basic animal studies of central neural and neuropharmacological mechanisms, to human research that examines the links between psychological processes and autonomic as well as immune functions. Central to this program of research is an effort to understand, at a theoretical level, the organizational principles that characterize psychobiological relations. Recent collaborative research includes:

1. the role of cognitive and social factors in autonomic regulation and immune functions,
2. contribution of cortical/cognitive processes to anxiety, and the neural systems that mediate these relations,
3. the impact of autonomic states on higher neural systems,
4. the integrative organization of neurobehavioral, neuroendocrine, autonomic and immune systems, and
5. psychoneuroimmunology and the social neuroscience of health and disease

Cacioppo, John T., Ph.D.

Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor

John T. Cacioppo, Ph.D., is the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor at The University of Chicago and the Director of the University of Chicago’s Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience. He currently is the President-Elect of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) and a member of the National Advisory Council on Aging of the US Department of Health and Human Services. In addition, he is a Fellow of numerous scientific societies including the Society of Experimental Psychologists, Association for Psychological Science, American Psychological Association, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Academy of Behavioral Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among his awards are the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award, National Academy of Sciences Troland Research Award, Society for Psychophysiological Research Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Psychophysiology, and Donald Campbell Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. He has published more than a dozen books and 300 scientific articles and chapters. Dr. Cacioppo is currently investigating the social and neural mechanisms underlying complex human behavior through an approach termed social neuroscience. Current research on this topic focuses on individual differences in affective processing, and the neural substrates of affective and socioemotional processing.