Lab Director
Marina López-Solà, PhD
Principal Investigator
Marina López-Solà's work centers on understanding the brain mechanisms, psychological and sensory processes that underlie pain and affective suffering in chronic pain and depressed individuals.
She obtained a PhD in Neuroscience and Medicine from the University of Barcelona. Following her doctorate, she pursued advanced training in neuroimaging and computational methods at the University of Colorado Boulder. She established an independent laboratory at Cincinnati Children's Hospital in 2017, where she built collaborations with chronic pain researchers and secured her inaugural R01 grant. Subsequently, she relocated to Barcelona, where she received the prestigious Ramón y Cajal award and obtained competitive RETOS project funding.
She holds positions as an Editor and Board Member for various organizations and aims to develop a strong translational pain and affective neuroscience research line in Europe and the US.
Post-doctoral Fellows
Maria Suñol Rodrigo
Post-doctoral Researcher
Maria completed her doctoral training at the Psychiatry and Mental Health department of the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute in Barcelona. Her dissertation focused on the neural bases of obsessions and compulsions in healthy children, using neuroimaging and genetic tools.
Her current work examines the intersection between social and affective cognition using multivariate neuroimaging analysis techniques. Additionally, she collaborates with the Anthropology Of Animal Life research group studying human relationships with animals.
Saül Pascual Díaz
Post-doctoral Researcher
Saül brings extensive expertise in neuroimaging data analysis. During his PhD at the University of Barcelona, he developed a novel method to minimize surgical damage using diffusion MRI data. He has taught neuroscience and neuroimaging at UB and worked with standard tools including FSL, SPM, ANTs, and MRtrix while collaborating with international consortia such as MELD and ENIGMA at IDIBAPS.
He is a member of the SPRINT project focused on chronic pain neuroimaging signatures in adolescents. He coordinates BCNspiracy and Sopa de Partículas, and serves as social media coordinator for the national Pint of Science team.
Graduate Students
Laura Martin Herrero
PhD Student — Joined September 2022
Laura holds a Degree in Biology and a Master's in Molecular Genetics and Biotechnology. She has completed three international internships.
Her research focuses on investigating the neurocognitive markers of chronic pain and depression. She specializes in computational neuroscience methods and her interests include developing neurocognitive markers and exploring connections between neuroimaging and molecular biology.
Staff Members
Lucia Blanc Velázquez
Laboratory Technician (Barcelona site) — Joined November 2021
Lucia holds an Environmental Science degree and is currently pursuing a Master's in Data Science. She is responsible for patient recruitment coordination, laboratory space management, and data collection and supervision. She is proficient in programming with R.
Catherine Jackson
Clinical Research Coordinator — Joined early 2020 (Cincinnati Children's)
Catherine holds a B.S. in Neuroscience from Ohio State University and an M.S. in Psychological Studies from the University of Glasgow. She serves as lead coordinator for the "Brain Mechanisms of Juvenile Fibromyalgia" study at the Cincinnati site.
Undergraduate & Master’s Students
Miguel Montero Escobedo
Neuroscience MSc Student
Miguel graduated with a Psychology degree in July 2022 and is currently pursuing an MSc in Neuroscience at the University of Barcelona. He received a competitive national studentship during his final undergraduate year to conduct neuropsychology research.
His thesis investigates self-identity elements in juvenile fibromyalgia and their correlation with brain functional responses during processing of self-related linguistic information.