Short biography

2017-present: Director of ACAP; 2013-present: CTO Braingaze SL;  2009-2014: Director of the VISCA lab; 2005-present: Research Professor, ICREA; 2005-present: Assistant professor University of Barcelona; 2002-2005: Head of the Vision and Cognition-II group, NIN, KNAW, The Netherlands; 1999-2001: Senior postdoc, NIN, NWO, The Netherlands; 1997-1999: Postdoc in the lab of Prof. Dr. V. Lamme, NORI, The Netherlands; 1992-1996: PhD student in the lab of Prof. Dr. E. Soriano, University of Barcelona.

Research interests

The understanding of the functional organization of the cerebral cortex that underlies cognitive behavior. I started my scientific journey by studying the ontogenetic and evolutionary development of the cerebral cortex to get a grasp of the immense complexity of the cortex. To learn about the functional organization of the neocortex, I continued my research studying system neurophysiology in awake, behaving monkeys and neural circuit dynamics using computer simulations. In 2011 we discovered a novel role of eye vergence movements in cognitive processing.  We termed it Cognitive Vergence. The use of Cognitive Vergence to measure cognition has been patented world-wide, and I founded the start-up company (Braingaze) in 2013. End 2017 I started the centre ACAP at the UB where graduate and master students can carry out clinical work using Cognitive Vergence.   Currently my research investigates 1) the neural mechanism of dynamic neural interactions, 2) the function of eye movements in visual cognition (Cognitive Vergence), and 3) clinical applications of Cognitive Vergence i early diagnosis of mental pathology being ADHD, Alzheimer, ASD, Dyslexia. Methods we use are computational spiking networks, eye tracking, machine learning, and psychophysics.

Key words

Cognition, Cortical Circuitry, Computational Modeling, Figure-ground Perception, System Neurophysiology, Visual Cortex

ORCID

0000-0001-9328-0096

RESEARCHER ID

L-3324-2014