About me
I am an associate professor at the Aging Research Center, Karolinska Institute, Sweden where I have established myself as an independent scientist. In parallel I work as a consultant psychiatrist at the Affective disorder unit at Psykiatri Nordväst, Stockholm, Sweden. I graduated in medicine in 2002 at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and obtained a PhD in Neuroscience at the same university in 2006. During my PhD, I performed experiments in the field of Behavioral and Molecular Pharmacology using animal models of vulnerability to addiction. After obtaining a PhD, my interests expanded to Cognitive Neuroscience and between 2008 and 2012 I was a postdoctoral fellow first at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and thereafter at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, at University College London (UCL).
Research description
I combine behavioral approaches, computational modeling, pharmacological manipulations, and imaging techniques such as fMRI and PET. I have currently two main research interests: First, to understand the role of neuromodulators like dopamine and serotonin in motivational process and decision-making; Second, to understand how subjective beliefs about the controllability of the environment impact reward learning and decision making. My previous research has focused on the study of healthy volunteers, but I am currently planning new experiments to study the relationship between the cognitive functions underlying decision-making abilities and the expression of depression in psychiatric patients.
Education
University Medical Degree
PhD in Neuroscience
Academic honours, awards and prizes
PhD prize of excellence (Premi extraordinari de final de doctorat), awarded by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.