Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM)

The Complutense University of Madrid is a public research university located in Madrid (Spain), and one of the oldest and largest universities in Europe. The Department of Psychobiology and Methodology in Behavioural Sciences is an interdisciplinary division devoted to the education and research in the biological basis of behaviour addressing the diversity and complexity of factors underlying the organization of behaviour from molecules to ecology.

Our research group of Neuroeducation and Development is formed by specialists in Neurosciences and Neuropsychology working in different lines of research: 1) Cellular and synaptic mechanisms underlying learning and memory: This line of research is aimed at trying to understand both the brain anatomical and functional substrates of learning and memory and the specific pathological mechanisms underlying learning difficulties and memory loss in diverse conditions from normal aging to genetic disorders associated with intellectual disability and autism. To pursue this goal, many different approaches are combined from behavioural studies in animal models to brain cellular, synaptic, molecular and genetic studies. 2) Origin and nature of cognitive deficits in dystrophinopathies: By means of diverse mouse models and a combination of histological and behavioural studies we try to identify the neuroanatomical and functional consequences of the loss of dystrophins in specific brain regions associated with cognitive functions such as the hippocampus and the related cognitive outcomes as a function of mutation point. Within a translational framework, neuropsychological assessment of patients is performed looking for a better understanding of the genotype-phenotype relationship and the identification of the most vulnerable cognitive domains in patients. The identification of both the brain mechanisms and the impaired cognitive, affective and conative domains is the underpinning to the development of cognitive stimulation programs that we combine with non-invasive transcranial brain stimulation techniques aimed at the rescue and/or compensation of cognitive function in patients. 3) Neuropsychology of executive function: This line of research framed within Clinical Neuropsychology and Applied Neuroscience is focused in the study of the executive function, its normal development (form early development to aging) and its alteration in the context of neurodevelopmental disorders.

Our team is formed by experienced researchers and clinical neuropsychologists and will participate in deep functional phenotyping of Duchenne muscular dystrophy and Becker muscular dystrophy patients (WP5). This will involve a large evaluation of cognition and neuropsychiatric co-morbidities in the Spanish population of patients.