Stephen W Porges, PhD is Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Brain-Body Center in the Department of Psychiatry in the College of Medicine, University of Illinois at Chicago. He is former President of the Federation of Behavioral, Psychological and Cognitive Sciences and the Society for Psychophysiological Research. He is a neuroscientist with interests in social behaviour.

Dr Porges was President (1999-2002) of the Federation of Behavioral, Psychological and Cognitive Sciences. He has served on the Editorial Boards of Infant Behavior and Development (1977-1992); Child Development Developmental Psychobiology; Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology.

In 1994 he proposed the Polyvagal Theory, a theory that links the evolution of the autonomic nervous system to the emergence of social behaviour. The theory provides insights into the mechanisms mediating social engagement and intimacy and in the symptoms observed in several behavioural, psychiatric, and physical disorders.

His numerous papers include

• Attachment and Bonding: A New Synthesis (1995) Cambridge: Press
• Orienting in a defensive world: Mammalian modifications of our evolutionary heritage. A Polyvagal Theory (1998) Psychophysiology, 32, 301-318
• Love: An emergent property of the mammalian autonomic nervous system (2003) Psychoneuroendocrinology, 23, 837-861
• Social engagement and attachment: A phylogenetic perspective. (2007) Roots of Mental Illness in Children, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1008, 31-47
• The Polyvagal Perspective. (2007) Biological Psychology, 74, 116-143

Brain-Body Center - University of Illinois at Chicago
www.psych.uic.edu/bbc

Stephen Porges
www.stephenporges.info