Diego Pinal Email and Phone Number

Before joining the Neuropsychophysiology Lab at Universidade do Minho, I earned my PhD at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (Spain). In addition, I completed several projects at the Laboratory of Functional Neuroscience of the Universidad Pablo de Olavide (Spain), and at the Brain and Behaviour Research Unit of the University of Surrey (United Kingdom). During this period, my work was devoted to the study of psychophysiological markers of normal aging as well as mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease. In particular, my focus was on the study of age-related changes in electrical brain activity supporting the control of contents in visual working and short-term memory. To that end I have employed different techniques, mainly, event-related potentials (ERPs) as well as time-frequency analysis, including both power and phase analyses along with functional connectivity assessments.Since February 2016 I am working at the Neuropsychophysiology Lab (Universidade de Minho, Portugal). His current projects deal with the developmental course of brain activity correlates of selective attention and proactive interference. Despite certain commonalities in brain development and senescence, the aforementioned two aspects of cognitive control and executive functioning are among those that follow a different path at both edges of the lifespan. Therefore, the study and characterization of age-related changes in their associated brain activity (using EEG and fMRI) could add valuable information to lifespan theories of cognitive function and development. In addition, brain activity parameters related to both cognitive functions could serve as cornerstones to build a model (based on machine learning algorithms) able of correctly infer the “developmental” age of a participant. This will ultimately help in the study of neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders.