Gary Berntson - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Gary Berntson is professor at Ohio State University

Ohio State University

The Ohio State University, commonly referred to as Ohio State, is a public research university located in Columbus, Ohio. It was originally founded in 1870 as a land-grant university and is currently the third largest university campus in the United States...

with appointments in the departments of psychology, psychiatry and pediatrics. He is an expert in psychophysiology

Psychophysiology

Psychophysiology is the branch of psychology that is concerned with the physiological bases of psychological processes. While psychophysiology was a general broad field of research in the 1960s and 1970s, it has now become quite specialized, and has branched into subspecializations...

, neuroscience

Neuroscience

Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. Traditionally, neuroscience has been seen as a branch of biology. However, it is currently an interdisciplinary science that collaborates with other fields such as chemistry, computer science, engineering, linguistics, mathematics,...

, biological psychology, and with his colleague John Cacioppo

John Cacioppo

John T. Cacioppo is the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He founded and is Director of the University of Chicago Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience and the Director of the Arete Initiative of the Office of the Vice President for...

, a founding father of social neuroscience

Social neuroscience

Social neuroscience is an interdisciplinary field devoted to understanding how biological systems implement social processes and behavior, and to using biological concepts and methods to inform and refine theories of social processes and behavior. Humans are fundamentally a social species, rather...

.
His research attempts to elucidate the functional organization of brain mechanisms underlying behavioral and affective processes, with a special emphasis on social cognition.

Background

Berntson studied biology and psychology at the University of Minnesota

University of Minnesota

The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...

, and was awarded a Ph.D. (psychobiology and life sciences) in 1971. He then worked as a post-doc fellow with Neal Miller at Rockefeller University

Rockefeller University

The Rockefeller University is a private university offering postgraduate and postdoctoral education. It has a strong concentration in the biological sciences. It is also known for producing numerous Nobel laureates...

in the department of psychology between 1971-1973. Since 1973, Berntson is on the faculty at the Ohio State University.

Editorial duties

Chief Associate Editor, Physiological Psychology, 1978-1985
Acting Editor, Physiological Psychology, 1983-1985
Associate Editor, Psychophysiology, 1994-1998
Co-Editor, Social Neuroscience Book Series, MIT Press, 2000-present
Secretary, Society for Psychophysiology, 2006-2009
Board of Directors, Society for Psychophysiology, 2006-2009
Associate Editor, Emotion Review, 2007-2009
Editorial Board, International Journal of Psychophysiology, 2007-
Editor (with John Cacioppo) of upcoming Handbook of Neuroscience for the Behavioral Sciences

Research interests

The broad interest of Berntson's program is in the elucidation of the functional organization of brain

Brain

The brain is the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals—only a few primitive invertebrates such as sponges, jellyfish, sea squirts and starfishes do not have one. It is located in the head, usually close to primary sensory apparatus such as vision, hearing,...

mechanisms underlying behavioral and affective processes, with a special emphasis on social neuroscience

Social neuroscience

. The program is guided conceptually by a recognition of the importance of multiple levels of analyzes 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

Anxiety

Anxiety is a psychological and physiological state characterized by somatic, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral components. The root meaning of the word anxiety is 'to vex or trouble'; in either presence or absence of psychological stress, anxiety can create feelings of fear, worry, uneasiness,...

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: a) the role of cognitive and social factors in autonomic regulation and immune functions, b) contribution of cortical/cognitive processes to anxiety

Anxiety

, and the neural systems that mediate these relations, c) the impact of autonomic states on higher neural systems, d) the integrative organization of neurobehavioral, neuroendocrine, autonomic and immune systems, and e) psychoneuroimmunology and the social neuroscience of health and disease.

Selected books

Cacioppo, J.T., Tassinary, L.G., & Berntson, G. G. (2007). Handbook of Psychophysiology. Cambridge University Press.
Cacioppo, J.T., Berntson, G.G., & Adolphs, R. (2002). Foundations in Social Neuroscience. MIT Press.
Cacioppo, John; Berntson, Gary (2005-01-27). Social Neuroscience: Key Readings (Key Readings in Social Psychology). Psychology Press Ltd. ISBN 978-1841690995.

Selected articles

Berntson GG; Uchino BN; Cacioppo JT (1994). "Origins of baseline variance and the Law of Initial Values
Wilder's law of initial value
Wilder's law of initial value states that "the direction of response of a body function to any agent depends to a large degree on the initial level of that function", proposed by Joseph Wilder...

". Psychophysiology; 31(2): 204-10.
Cacioppo, J.T., Berntson, G.G. (2005). "Analysis of the social brain through the lens of human brain imaging." In Cacioppo, J. T. & Berntson, G. G. (eds.) Social Neuroscience (pp. 1-17). New York: Psychology Press.
Berntson, G.G., Lozano, D.L., & Chen, Y-J. (2005). "Filter properties of the root mean square successive difference (RMSSD) statistic in heart rate." Psychophysiology, 42, 246-252.
Bosch, J.A., Berntson, G.G., Cacioppo, J.T., & Marucha, P.T. (2005). "Differential mobilization of functionally distinct Natural Killer subsets during acute psychological stress." Psychosomatic Medicine, 67, 366-375.
Hawkley, L.C., Berntson, G.G., Engeland, C.G., Marucha, P.T., Masi, C.M., & Cacioppo, J.T. (2005). "Stress, aging, and resilience: Can accrued wear and tear be slowed?" Canadian Psychology, 46, 114-125.
Berntson, G.G., & Cacioppo, J.T. (2005). "Multilevel analysis: Physiological and biochemical measures." In Eid, M. & Diener, E. (Eds.), Handbook of multimethod measurement in psychology. (pp. 157-172). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Berntson, G.G. & Cacioppo, J.T. (2006). "Reasoning about brains." In Cacioppo, J.T., Visser, P.S., & Picket, C.L. (Eds.) Social neuroscience: People thinking about thinking people. (pp 1–11). Cambrdige, MA: MIT Press.
Demaree, H.A., Schmeichel, B.J., Robinson, J.L., Pu, J., Everhart, D.E., & Berntson, G.G. (2006). "Up- and down-regulating facial disgust: Affective, vagal, sympathetic, and respiratory consequences." Biological Psychology, 71, 90-99.
Cacioppo J.T. & Berntson, G.G. (2006). "A bridge linking social psychology and the neurosciences." In Lange, P.M.V. (Ed.) Bridging social psychology. (pp 91–96). Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Berntson, G.G., Bechara, A., Damasio, H., Tranel, D., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2007). "Amygdala contributions to selective dimensions of emotion." Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience, 2, 123-129.
Berntson, G.G., Norman, G.J., Hawkley, L.C. & Cacioppo, J.T. (2008). "Cardiac Autonomic Balance vs. Cardiac Regulatory Capacity."Psychophysiology, 45, 643-652.
Berntson, G.G. & Cacioppo, J.T. (2008). "The functional neuroarchitecture of evaluative processes." In A. Elliot (Ed.) Handbook of Approach and Avoidance Motivation. Elliot, A. (pp. 307-321) New York: Lawrence Erlbaum.

External links

Gary Berntson Lab http://faculty.psy.ohio-state.edu/berntson/
Ohio State University http://www.osu.edu/