I am:  Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Multisensory Research group at UPF.

I am interested in:  the relationship between neural states and cognition. I am interested in the study of the dynamics of brain activity and its perception with attention, perception, memory, and spatial navigation, among others.

One discovery I am proud of:  Several studies have linked the phase of brain oscillatory activity with the detection of faint stimuli. Recently, we extended this link to memory: we tested the hypothesis that the phase of theta (4 Hz) activity before stimulus presentation would correlate with successful encoding in an associative memory task. Although no particular phase was associated with pairs subsequently forgotten, we observed a preferential phase for pairs subsequently remembered, and thus we confirmed the relevance of ongoing oscillatory activity for memory performance. This work is published in Cruzat, J., Torralba, M., Ruzzoli, M., Fernández, A., Deco, G., & Soto-Faraco, S. (2021). The phase of theta oscillations modulates successful memory formation at encoding. Neuropsychologia, 154.

One thing I would like to discover next: I would like to understand the link between endogenous neural activity and spatial navigation and, more importantly, to use sensory stimulation in order to improve spatial navigation skills. At present, I will work with healthy population, but my desire would be to be able to improve the quality of life of clinical populations at risk of orientation problems.  

One article I would like you to read: Ruzzoli, M., Torralba, M., Morís-Fernández, L., & Soto-Faraco, S., & Woldorff, M. G. (2019). The relevance of alpha phase in human perception. Cortex, 120, 249-2698.