On March 14 this year, PhD student in Social Complexity Mauricio Aspé-Sánchez presented his doctoral thesis in Neurosciences, a program taught by the Valparaiso Interdisciplinary Center of Neuroscience (CINV).

Mauricio’s thesis, titled Unmasking reciprocity: Behavioral component and neural correlates of human trustworthiness, presents an approach from an interdisciplinary perspective – mixing game theory and the analysis of the neurophysiological correlate – on the behavioral and neuronal components of reciprocity and altruism in dictator games and investment or trust games.

Given the interdisciplinary nature of Mauricio's proposal, he had three tutors who guided different aspects of his work: John Ewer, PhD from CINV and Raffaella Rumiti, PhD from Scuola Internazionale Superiore di StudiAvanzati (SISSA), who supervised the aspects related to neuropsychological evaluation. Finally, Carlos Rodríguez-Sickert, Director of CICS, oversaw the experimental design of game theory used in the research.

Due to the excellent evaluation of the commission, which besides the tutors had the participation of the outstanding PhD researchers Francisco Aboitiz From PUC and Alexies Dagnino from the University of Valparaiso, Mauricio scored the maximum qualification in his defense and therefore earned the maximum distinction.