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11/07/2023 - General information

Manuel Valero receives an award from the Spanish Society of Neurosciences for his contributions to the study of the "GPS of the brain".

The jury of the Tatiana Foundation Award for Young Researchers, composed of the board of the Spanish Society of Neurosciences (SENC) and a member of the Scientific Council for Neuroscience of the Tatiana Foundation, has unanimously awarded the Tatiana Foundation Young Researcher Award 2023 to Dr. Manuel Valero (Albacete, 1987), who since the beginning of this year has been carrying out his research work at the Hospital del Mar Research Institute in Barcelona.

The jury has positively valued the scientific excellence of the candidate through the impact of his published work to the neuroscientific community, as well as his international scientific leadership and his ability to guide and mentor other researchers.

Both this award is intended to promote Dr. Valero's research, as well as to reward the scientific work carried out. The award includes an accreditation and an economic endowment of 2,000 euros provided by the Tatiana Foundation. In addition, the recipient will be a member of the SENC Young Researchers Committee for the next two years, and will give a plenary lecture at the SENC Day, which will take place on September 8, in the framework of the IBRO World Congress to be held in Granada from September 9 to 13.

Manuel Valero

Brilliant career

After completing his PhD at the Cajal-CSIC Institute in Madrid, Manuel Valero moved as a postdoc to the György Buzsáki laboratory, at the University of New York, world leader in the study of brain oscillations. In addition, he combined his doctoral studies with stays at the laboratories of Peter Somogy, at the University of Oxford, and Robert G. Averkin, at the University of Szeged, in Hungary, all leading neuroscientists.

As a PhD student, Valero published two excellent articles in "Neuron" and "Nature Neuroscience" on two very difficult physiology projects requiring electrophysiological recordings and innovative data analysis, in which he stood out for his creativity and the robustness of the data obtained.

In one of his latest works, published last year in Science (Exploring the subintimal dynamics of hippocampal neurons using optogenetics), Valero, "using a new technique based on optogenetic stimulation to study neuron excitability, the neural processes responsible for the representation of space in the brain," according to the journal Science". The cells are part of what is commonly known as the "GPS system" of the brain.

According to the thesis director, Liset Menéndez de la Prida, a leading expert in the study of the basic mechanisms of physiological and epileptic brain oscillations, from the Cajal Institute-CSIC, Manuel Valero "has made extraordinary discoveries that have changed the way we think about how local microcircuits represent spatial information. He has published fundamental articles in leading journals such as Science, Nature Neuroscience and Neuron. He has received several awards, including the prestigious Peter and Patricia Gruber International Research Award in Neuroscience, given by the American Society for Neuroscience and Yale University, to which is now added the Tatiana Foundation Award for Young Researchers.

Dr. Manuel Valero directs the Neural Computation Laboratory at the Hospital del Mar Research Institute, in Barcelona. His goal is to understand how neurons interact and adapt connections to generate neural representations of the world, learning and memories, and thus contribute to unravel the neural mechanisms underlying cognition, and how their alterations lead to pathological states.

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