Neus Barrantes-Vidal (Barcelona, 1971) obtained her BSc in Psychology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), where she also obtained her PhD (Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award) in 2000. She conducted a MSc at the Hospital Clínic de Barcelona and became a Licensed Specialist in Clinical Psychology in 2008 (Ministry of Science). She was a visiting predoctoral researcher in the University of Oxford. She became an Associate Professor at the Department of Clinical Psychology of UAB, where she is the principal investigator of the “Person-Environment Interaction in Psychopathology” Research Group (SGR). She held an Adjunct Associate Professorship at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (USA). She was a member of the Psychology Advisory Board for the Assessment of Scientific Research at the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (2012-16). In addition, she serves as Research Consultant for clinical centers at the Sant Pere Claver Health Foundation.

Research interests

We study the interaction of genotype, person and psychosocial environment in configuring several etiological pathways to psychosis. We identify individuals with heightened risk for psychosis in nonclinical (ie, schizotypy) and clinical populations (ie, individuals with at risk mental states) and conduct longitudinal studies to delineate trajectories of risk and resilience for schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Our approach focuses on the dynamics of sub/clinical symptoms and person-environment interactions in real life, and makes use of mobile technologies to map such dynamic mental processes and obtain ecologically valid measures. This work has clinical applications, as understanding real-life symptom variation and its internal and situational determinants is critical for improving diagnoses and tailoring individualized treatments. Finally, I am also interested in healthy expressions of risk for psychopathology (eg, creativity), and in epistemological issues.

Keywords

Clinical Psychology, Ecological assessment, Dimensional models, Psychosis, Schizotypy