After my Degree in Psychology I specialised at the University of Barcelona (UB) in Psycholinguistics and Cognitive Neuroscience during my PhD. After that, I spent three years as a post-doc at the INSERM U955 (Université Paris Est, Créteil, UPEC) where I studied the involvement of the striatum in the learning new rules in language. I also was maître de conferences (tenured) at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. After an ICREA Researcher period, I am currently an ICREA Research Professor at the UB. My research is mainly focused on the cognitive functions and neural circuits engaged in the extraction of grammatical rules while learning a new language.

Research interests

My research combines information from brain-damaged patients, developmental populations and brain-imaging in healthy individuals to understand whether words and rules of language require different neural and cognitive mechanisms to be acquired since the earliest stages of contact with a new language. I am particularly interested in i) the role of the attentional systems in the acquisition of different aspects of language; ii) the role of the striatum as a brain structure that could make the interface between language and other cognitive functions necessary in the learning process; and iii) how is the acquired information consolidated and modified when we learn new additional information.