Ralf Schmälzle, Ph.D./Assoc. Prof.

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Neuroscience of Messages Lab

Center for Avatar Research and Immersive Social Media Applications (Carismalab)

Department of Communication

Michigan State University

Welcome!
I study communication neuroscience. This involves a radically interdisciplinary approach that integrates theories from communication science, cognitive neuroscience, and psychology.

My goal is to find out how the human brain responds to messages and how brain activity relates to message effects. Much of my work focuses on

• Media Neuroscience and Mass Communication
  (e.g.: How do mass media collectively engage the brains of audience members? How do we respond to movies and stories?) and

• Neuroimaging of Health and Risk Communication
  (e.g.: Can we predict whether a message will work and for whom? Can we detect neural signatures of  attention, personal relevance, or affective evaluation?).

Two cross-cutting themes that play a large role in my current work are Virtual Reality – the communication medium of the future – and Artificial Intelligence – the quest to build machines that can think, act, and communicate like humans.

Thanks for your interest in my work, and for visiting this site.