ICREA - Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats

 
        


                 
 
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Costa Martínez, Albert

ICREA Research Professor at UPF (Universitat Pompeu Fabra). Humanities

Born in 1970, I received my PhD in psychology in 1997 (Universitat de Barcelona). In 1998, I started my post-doctoral career at the “Brain and Cognitive Sciences department” at MIT, thanks to the funding from the Catalan Government. From 1999 to 2000, I was a post-doctoral fellow at the “Cognitive Neuropsychology laboratory” at Harvard University with a “Fulbright scholarship”. In 2001, I moved to the Cognitive Neuroscience department at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste. From 2002 to 2005 I was a research fellow “Ramon y Cajal program” at the UB, and in 2006 I became an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology of the same university. Since 2008 I am a Research Professor at ICREA, and currently a member of the “Center of Brain and Cognition” from Universitat Pompeu Fabra.


Research Interests

My research focuses on the cognitive and neural underpinnings of language processing. In this broad context, I am particularly interested in understanding how two languages are represented and processed by the same brain. Therefore, I seek answers to various questions related to bilingual language processing such as: what are the neural structures involved in the ability of bilinguals to keep their two languages apart during speech production?, what are the effects of neurodegenerative diseases for the two languages of a bilingual?, is there any linguistic cost and attentional advantage linked to bilingualism?, how learning a second language affects linguistic processing in the first language? I address these issues by conducting experiments using both classic experimental psychology techniques and brain imaging and electrophysiological techniques, exploring the performance of both brain-damage individuals (patients with stroke and Alzheimer’s disease) and healthy individuals.


 


KeyWords

Language Processing, Cognitive Psychology, Neuroscience, Bilingualism, Attentional Control
 


Selected Publications Ongoing Grants Lines of Research Patents