Mauricio A. Garcia-Barrera

I am a native of Medellin, Colombia. After completing my bachelor’s degree in psychology at the University of Antioquia, I relocated to Georgia (US), where I obtained my Master’s (2005) and PhD (2008) in Psychology (School Psychology/Developmental Neuropsychology emphasis) at the University of Georgia. I am now an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Victoria (BC, Canada), which I joined in 2008. At UVic, I created the CORTEX lab [www.cortex.uvic.ca], a research lab specialized in the study of the neural and behavioural foundations of executive functioning. I am now the Associate Dean Research and Graduate Studies for the Faculty of Social Sciences. I also serve as Associate Editor of the APA journal Psychological Assessment and I am the past President of the Latin American Association of Neuropsychology (2018-2021). My research focuses on the study of executive functioning, our ability to problem-solve, make decisions, and organize cognitive processes towards achieving a goal. I have a particular interest in the psychometric assessment of executive function, but most of my research focuses on clinical events or environmental variables that may modify the lifespan development of this self-regulatory capacity, such as the effects of positive life experiences ranging from sports participation and leadership-based employment to negative experiences such as brain injury (e.g., sports concussions, hypoxic/anoxic brain damage associated with synthetic drug overdose), the experience of war, and the intersections between brain injury, mental health, and addictions.