Ralf Schmälzle, Ph.D./Assoc. Prof.

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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:

Social Interaction: Humans & AI
Investigating the mechanics of connection — from natural eye contact to interactions with embodied AI agents. I explore how VR, LLMs, and digital avatars can be optimized to create seamless, “real” social presence

Media Neuroscience: The Collective Mind
How do movies, stories, and mass media collectively engage and synchronize the brains of an audience? I focus on these shared responses to link information theory (from engineering) to mass communication (from social science), focusing on media influence mechanisms and population-level media effects.

Neuroforcasting: Health and Risk Communication
Can we predict if a message will change your life (or that of other recipients in a campaign)? I use neuroimaging to identify the hidden markers of persuasion and attention that determine a message’s impact.

Three cross-cutting themes that play a large role in my current work are Neuroimaging — the window into the black box of the mind – 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.