Santiago Canals

I’m Full Professor of the Spanish Research Council (CSIC) and lead the Laboratory of Plasticity of Brian Networks in the Instituto de Neurociencias (CSIC-UMH) in San Juan de Alicante.

I joined the CSIC in 2009 after working in the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen (Germany) together with Prof. Nikos Logothetis. Since then my research has focused on the mechanisms of information transfer and directionality in brain networks during memory encoding, with special attention to the regulatory role of interneurons and synaptic plasticity. The laboratory’s applied research focuses on studying alterations in the functional and structural brain network in drug addiction, especially in alcohol dependence. The lab combines (and develops) state-of-the-art techniques to bridge the gap between local processing and long range communication in brain networks, including concomitant fMRI and electrophysiological recordings, optogenetics and pharmacogenetics.