Recently, the External Advisory Council whose function is to evaluate the IUNE Scientific Strategic Plan and other aspects of the center's operation. It is composed of internationally renowned researchers:
Taught by Dr. Andrés Fernández (University of La Rioja UNIR): “Eye movements during image processing and facial expressions: Practical exercises with the SMI system”, Dr. Isabel Orenes (UNED, Madrid): “The study of the interaction between language and the visual world: Practical exercises with the Eye-Link system”, and Dr. Alberto Avilés (Oxford Brooks University): “Eye movements during reading: Practical exercises and analysis with the Eye-Link system”. It was held in October 2017 and the total duration was approximately 12 hours.
Taught by Dr. Raul Espert Tortajada, from the University of Valencia. Duration: 3 hours. Date: October 18.
Compatibility Effects of Color Representation and Motor Processes in Chinese (L1) and English (L2) Sentence Processing; (b) Cognitive Mechanism of Chinese (L1) and English Relative Clauses (L2). Research meetings were also held with doctoral students and researchers from IUNE. Visiting Professor: Dr. Huili Wang from Dalian University (China). Duration: 6 hours. July 2017.
Taught by Dr. Maykel López (University of Eastern Finland, Institute of Clinical Medicine, Internal Medicine, Kuopio, Finland). Duration: 6 hours. June 2017.
Taught by Dr. Stavros I. Dimitriadis (Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Center (CUBRIC), School of Psychology). Duration: 6 hours. May 2017.
«"Introduction to the use of Fieldtrip (Matlab Toolbox) for EEG signal analysis. Basic steps for cluster-based random permutation analysis" and "Introduction to the use of CARTOOL software for source estimation in EEG data." Taught on October 3, 2018, by Dr. Beatriz Bermudez-Margareto, from the Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience, National Research University, Moscow, Russia. Duration: 3 hours.
In this course, Dr. Ricardo Bruña Fernández, professor at the Complutense University of Madrid, will explain the reconstruction of EEG and MEG sources. He will teach an introductory module, discuss sensors and data acquisition and preprocessing, brain activity models, EEG/MEG reconstruction algorithms, and finally, applications and practical cases in neuroscience.
This event, organized and sponsored by the University Institute of Neuroscience at the University of La Laguna, the Official College of Psychology of Las Palmas, the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Aalto University, and Harvard Medical School, aims to foster international relationships among professors, researchers, and institutions, and to develop high-quality projects based on mutual enthusiasm. It also seeks to disseminate recent advances among the participants.Program
Recordings
From IUNE we organized a workshop on electroencephalography (EEG), taught by the Dr. Agustina Birba, The course will be held on April 22, 23, and 24, from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. in the NEUROCOG meeting room. Places are limited and will be assigned on a first-come, first-served basis. The course is free of charge, as it is subsidized by the project 'Actions to Boost R&D&I Activity, Campus of International Excellence, CEI Canarias ULL', granted by the Ministry of Economy, Knowledge and Employment of the Government of the Canary Islands and the Canary Agency for Research, Innovation and the Information Society.
Reference and title: PSI2013-42912-R Neuroimaging Specificity in People with Specific Phobias and Changes in Brain Activity Due to Exposure to Virtual Reality Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness Abstract: This project had two main objectives: to identify (using fMRI) specific brain activation patterns in the processing of phobic stimuli in a sample of people with specific phobias of small animals, and how these activation patterns change through cognitive-behavioral treatment involving exposure to phobic stimuli. Furthermore, it was also analyzed whether stimuli modeled with virtual reality generated patterns similar to the real phobic stimuli.
Those responsible: Lidia Santana-Vega, Olga González-Morales, Luis Feliciano and Fernando Barragán.
Those responsible: Lidia Santana-Vega, Olga González-Morales, Luis Feliciano and Fernando Barragán.
Responsible: Manuel Gutierrez Calvo.
Responsible: Manuel de Vega Rodríguez.
Responsible: Ernesto Pereda de Pablo.
Responsible: María Ángeles Alonso Rodríguez.
Responsible: José Luis González Mora.
Those responsible: Carlos Santamaría Moreno and Orlando Germán Espino Morales.
Those responsible: Daniel Mara; Olga María Alegre de la Rosa.
Responsible: Armando Rodríguez Pérez.
Responsible: Antonieta Nieto Barco.
Call: WORKING GROUPS ON HARMONISATION AND ALIGNMENT IN BRAIN IMAGING University of Cambridge: Laura Hughes. Head of IUNE: Ernesto Pereda de Pablo.
Those in charge: Inmaculada León Santana and María Josefa Rodrigo López.
Those responsible: Alberto Domínguez, Manuel de Vega, Hipólito Marrero and Iván Padrón.
Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices KA203 – Strategic Partnerships for higher education. European Economic Community. Project Manager: Olga María Alegre de la Rosa. MEDUSA emerged from a Strategic Partnership comprised of four entities from three countries (Spain, Italy, and Romania) deeply committed to social inclusion and diversity: three universities and one SME. Its objective is to develop an International Master's Degree in Education in Diversity and Social Inclusion, offering a curriculum tailored to equip younger generations with the specific, fundamental, and transversal skills currently required in the education sector. This international master's program will offer students the opportunity to acquire additional skills through online study and training.
PI: Manuel de Vega, Grant: €80,000. Embodied theories propose that the motor system (M1) underlies the comprehension of action language, but they do not demonstrate the causal role of M1 in comprehension. This project employs a novel approach to test that motor activation is necessary for understanding action language by perturbing M1 with non-invasive stimulation and observing how comprehension is modified. It also studies how linguistic negation reuses the motor inhibition network to suppress the activation of the negated concept.
Reference and title: PSI2017-83222-R Analysis of contextual variables that favor conscious processing of phobic stimuli, using neuroimaging. Implications for exposure techniques (2018-2021). Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness. Abstract: This project aims to analyze the role of two conditions in the processing of phobic stimuli. Neuroimaging data identify two pathways in this processing: a fast/non-conscious pathway and a long/conscious pathway. This second pathway involves complex thalamus-entorhinal cortex-hippocampus-subiculum-amygdala connections. This pathway may have clear implications for the effectiveness of therapeutic processes, especially those related to exposure techniques: deactivation and self-instruction. This project seeks to test whether deactivation techniques and self-instruction facilitate the processing of phobic stimuli via the conscious pathway.
Funding Reference EDU2017-84193-R Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness of the Government of Spain Víctor M. Acosta Rodríguez (PI), Gustavo M. Ramírez Santana, Sergio Hernández Expósito, and Ángeles Axpe Caballero. The project has two objectives. First, to identify and assess a group of students in the final year of preschool who face significant challenges in learning to read and who have recently been diagnosed with Language Development Disorder. Second, to design, develop, and evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention program to improve reading comprehension. The project is based on the premise that a child progresses in learning to read when, following the automatization of decoding processes, oral comprehension becomes a primary focus for reading comprehension. The program's content is based on an adaptation of the La Cuerda Model (Scarborough, 2010). Specifically, the work on learning and automating decoding skills is combined with the stimulation of oral language (lexical depth, figurative language, morphosyntax, narrative skills), executive functions, inferences, and working memory.
Those in charge: Ibrahim González Marrero and Herminia Pérez.
Language enables social communication and the description of interactions through attitudinal verbs, whether "for" or "against" stimuli in different contexts: "Luisa included/excluded meat in her diet," "Luisa included/excluded Pedro in her group of friends." This has important adaptive functions, such as communicating preferences and aversions, thereby facilitating social navigation. The objective of this project is to demonstrate the cognitive relevance of the approach/avoidance dimension in language. The hypotheses tested are as follows: a) The representation of approach-avoidance (AA) reuses bodily neural mechanisms; b) The negation marker modulates the representation of AA; c) The AA dimension modulates brain signatures distinct from the valence of the stimuli; d) The encoding of AA recruits brain areas of the mentalization network. The methodology used is based on sentence comprehension, and employs behavioral techniques (reading and recognition times), and neuroscientific techniques (evoked brain response, non-invasive brain stimulation and source analysis).
Responsible: Niels Janssen.
Those in charge: Mª Angeles Alonso Rodríguez and Emiliano Díez.
Principal Investigators: David Beltrán and Manuel de Vega. Grant: €90,750. The project aims to consolidate the Reuse of Inhibition in Negation (RIN) hypothesis by verifying: 1) its generalizability: inhibitory processes occur in both the comprehension and production of negations; 2) robustness: new paradigms will test inhibition in contexts of semantic inhibition (Hayling task) or language switching (especially from L2 to L1); 3) dissociation of response inhibition and conflict resolution processes in the production of negations.
Funding Entity: Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities Reference: RTI2018-095006-B-100 Abstract: The main objective of this project is to test the theoretical model of mental workload proposed in the UNE-EN ISO 10075-1 standard and to analyze the consequences of mental workload on health. It will be examined whether a history of mental stress has an impact on objective measures (psychophysiological markers and performance) and subjective measures of mental workload (pressure, mental strain, and fatigue). The results will offer guidelines for prevention and intervention to improve performance, working conditions, and to promote health and well-being.
PIs: María Josefa Rodrigo López and Inmaculada León Santana RTI2018-098149-B-I00. Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities. The general objective of this project is to advance in understanding the differential characteristics of mothers with neglectful behavior in caring for children's needs, in their epigenetic, neuroanatomical and functional connectivity profile and in their attentional processes in response to emotional stimuli, as well as their possible impact on the quality of interaction patterns with their children, taking into account their psychological, neuropsychological, psychiatric profile and life adversity.
