Ruth de Diego  Balaguer

Ruth de Diego Balaguer

Universitat de Barcelona

Social & Behavioural Sciences

After a Degree in Psychology I specialised during my PhD at the University of Barcelona (UB) in Psycholinguistics and Cognitive Neuroscience. I spent three years as a post-doc at the INSERM in Paris (Université Paris Est, Créteil, UPEC) where I studied the involvement of the striatum in the learning of new rules in language. I was a Research-Lecturer at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris before I created my lab at the UB, back in Barcelona as an ICREA Junior Researcher. After that, I became an ICREA Research Professor and consolidated my group at the UB with an ERC Starting Grant. 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.

Selected publications

– Martinez-Alvarez A, Gervain J, Koulaguina E, Pons F, de Diego-Balaguer R 2023, ‘Prosodic cues enhance infants’ sensitivity to nonadjacent regularities‘, Science Advances, 9(15), eade4083.

– Bosch L, Colomé A, de Diego-Balaguer R & Rodriguez-Fornells A, 2023, El Lenguaje, in D. Redolar Ripoll & A. Valero-Cabré (Eds.), ‘Neurociencia Cognitiva (Chapter 16)’, Madrid, Editorial Médica Panamericana.

Selected research activities

Grants
Grup de Recerca Consolidat. Generalitat de Catalunya. Brain Dynamics and Structure of Human Cognition (2021SGR352). PI: Ruth de Diego Balaguer.
Invited Talks
-In the right place, at the right time: temporal expectations modulate language learning. Mind and Matter Conference, University of Helsinki.
-Implications of neuro-cognitive maturation for learning and education. Jornada d’educació Lingüística basada en l’evidencia. Barcelona.
-The tight relationship between attention and language learning. CIMCYC, Universidad de Granada.
-Cerebro y conducta: La ventana a nuestra esencia como humanos. Aula Blas Cabrera. Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo.
Selected Conferences
-Quintero-Manes B, et al. Understanding offline statistical learning: Consolidation of information in short waking rest periods after task. Society for Neuroscience, Washington DC, USA
-Quintero-Manes B, et al. Disentangling the specific networks related to statistical learning from those for rule generalization. Neurobiology of Language Conference. Marseille, France.
Supervisions:
-David Lopez-Martos (Master in Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, UB)
-Clara Soberats (PhD Thesis, co-supervision with Wolfram Hinzen, UPF).
Outreach
-Pint of Science. ¿Qué nos hace mejor aprendices de un lenguaje?
-#100tífiques. Escola Angela Roca
-Radio interview in Radio Clásica, Programa Longitud de onda.
Review activities
ERC Advanced Grants,
ANR France, Ikerbasque
Editor for eLife, PLoS Biology.