Life and Matter Sciences Activities

Neurodegenerative diseases, rare diseases, and the brain

The new vision of ALS in the 21st century.  Bases moleculares

The 4th International Meeting of Research in ALS, result of the collaboration with the Luzón Foundation, was held online in 2020. Ellen Gelpi, Head of the Neurodegenerative and Neuromuscular Diseases Area of the Vienna General Hospital; Alberto García, principal investigator of the ALS Research Group of the Helath Research Institute at the 12 de Octubre Hospital (i+12); and Mónica Povedano, Director of the ALS Unit at the Bellvitge University Hospital (Barcelona), who was the moderator of the encounter, addressed some of the most important aspects in the basic research on this disease. 

Understand and reprogram developmental visual disorders: from anophthalmia to cortical deficiencies

Some of the leading experts in neurodevelopmental visual disorders (NDVD), a rare pathology, participated in this international symposium. The objective of the meeting, organized in collaboration with the Center for Biomedical Research on Rare Diseases Network (CIBERER) and the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), was to generate a debate on the consequences that a genetic defect in a visual structure has in the rest of the central nervous system with which it connects, and to progress on how to correct damaged circuits and lost functions.

Brain and gender: how our world can change our brain and condition our minds

Gina Rippon, a neuroscientist at the Aston Brain Center at Aston University, based her lecture on the new concepts of brain, sex and gender in order to deeply challenge held beliefs about the sex differences in the brain, their origins and roots, and what they might mean to people.