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Claudia Peñaloza

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Ramón y Cajal Research Fellow, Universitat de Barcelona

My research work combines tools and approaches from psycholinguistics, cognitive neuroscience, and neuropsychology to study the interplay between language processing and multiple aspects of cognition (i.e., memory, learning and executive functions) in clinical populations with language impairment due to stroke and neurodegenerative disorders.

I am interested in learning as a fundamental aspect of cognition that is inherent to rehabilitation. I employ different learning paradigms to study the ability to learn novel phonology and semantics in people with aphasia, determine how learning interacts with different cognitive processes and identify the neural underpinnings of this ability. My ultimate goal is to understand how the interaction between language and general cognitive processes contributes to treatment response and long-term outcomes in individuals with language deficits.

I am also interested in studying how languages interact in the bilingual brain in the presence of neural damage, characterizing language deficits in the context of individual differences in bilingual language learning history, and identifying better ways to assess deficits and predict recovery and therapy response in clinical populations.

Experience

  • 2023–present
    Ramon y Cajal Research Fellow, Cognition and Brain Plasticity Unit, Department of Cognition, development and educational psychology, Universitat de Barcelona
  • 2021–2022
    Juan de la Cierva Incorporación Postdoctoral associate , Cognition and Brain Plasticity Unit, Department of Cognition, development and educational psychology, Universitat de Barcelona
  • 2020–2021
    Sara Borrell Postdoctoral associate, Cognition and Brain Plasticity Unit, Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute
  • 2017–2020
    Postdoctoral associate, Aphasia Research Laboratory, Boston University (Boston, MA, USA)
  • 2016–2016
    Visiting researcher, BrainTrain Lab, Åbo Akademi University (Turku, Finland)

Education

  • 2016 
    Universitat de Barcelona, Ph.D. in Psychology
  • 2011 
    Universitat de Barcelona, M.A. in Clinical and Health Psychology-Specialized in Clinical Neuropsychology
  • 2002 
    Universidad Católica Boliviana, B.A. in Psychology

Publications

  • 2021
    Predicting language treatment response in bilingual aphasia using neural network-based patient models, Scientific Reports

Professional Memberships

  • Society for the Neurobiology of Language
  • International Neuropsychological Society
  • Collaboration of Aphasia Trialists