ELOÍSA HERRERA GONZÁLEZ DE MOLINA
ELOÍSA HERRERA GONZÁLEZ DE MOLINA
Working at:
ERC Project: “WIRINGVISION”
One fundamental characteristic of developing neuronal circuits is their capacity to change in response to sensory experience. This phenomenon has been particularly observed when generating cortical maps where altering the pattern of the sensory experience modifies the spatial organisation of sensory representations. The mechanisms underlying this form of plasticity include synaptic modification, such as long-term potentiation and long term depression, classically known as Hebbian-based rules. Nowadays, there is increasing evidence that before sensory experience, the neuronal electrical activity plays a role in early brain development. In several developing circuits, such as the retina, spinal fluid, the hippocampus and the cortex, transitory events take place that make these circuits spontaneously generate correlated activity waves.
(….) The first part of this proposal looks at primary development events where the independent sensory factors describe a first draft of neuronal connections. The second part will determine how far the wiring in the cortical maps depends on the formation of early thalamus properties and how this wiring can be modified through experience for optimum information processing.
Bio
I was born in Granada, but I spent the first thirteen years of my life in a psychiatric hospital because my father was a doctor there and our house stood within the hospital grounds. I’m not sure whether living in a psychiatric hospital subconsciously aroused my interest in Neurosciences but I’d like to think so, I am sure, however, that it was my father who fanned the flames of my fascination with life sciences. I remember that he ran competitions among my seven siblings and I, drilling us on different types of cells and making us draw them and tell him the purpose of everything they contained. I was fascinated when he told me that all the information needed to generate a living thing as complex as a human was something as small as a genome, something we can’t even see! My interest in biology just expanded from then on and when I finished my degree, I went to Madrid to take a master’s degree at the Severo Ochoa Molecular Biology Centre.
I met my current partner on that master’s course. He was writing his doctoral dissertation at the same school and we’ve been together ever since. Whilst I was doing my master’s degree, I was told that a very promising researcher, Maria Blasco (now known throughout Spain), had just arrived at the National Biotechnology Centre to train a research group focussed on studying the function of telomeres and telemerase in cancer and ageing. I went to speak to her and I still can’t believe how lucky I was to be selected to do my doctoral dissertation in her laboratory.
During this stage, I learnt all about scientific method and the fundamental mainstays of a research career: rigour, determination and hard work, a lot of hard work… Having done my PhD in Maria’s unusual lab opened many doors for me when choosing my post-doc position to develop the next stage of my career.
However, instead of continuing in the field of ageing and cancer, I followed my gut feeling to work in Neurosciences, so I went to the University of Columbia in New York to start a career focussed on Developmental Neurobiology. This stage was probably the most stimulating of my entire life intellectually because being in contact with the best scientists in the world generates an incredible atmosphere that is contagious and really brings out the best in you.
When I returned to Spain, I joined the Institute of Neurosciences in Alicante that was just starting up and was giving young researchers the chance to set up their own research groups. The Institute has been a fantastic place to develop the line of research we have been working on for almost fourteen years. For a Neuroscientist, working here is ideal due to interactions with other molecular, cellular, evolutionist, geneticist biologists, etc. but also working alongside mathematicians, computer programmers, physicists, psychologists or doctors that approach the study of the brain from different perspectives.
After all these years as a researcher, I know that I chose the right profession, I love my job and what’s more, I have had the great advantage of being able to count on advice, support and help from my partner and family throughout my career, which is really fundamental to be able to work in this field.
Working at:
Bio
I was born in Granada, but I spent the first thirteen years of my life in a psychiatric hospital because my father was a doctor there and our house stood within the hospital grounds. I’m not sure whether living in a psychiatric hospital subconsciously aroused my interest in Neurosciences but I’d like to think so, I am sure, however, that it was my father who fanned the flames of my fascination with life sciences. I remember that he ran competitions among my seven siblings and I, drilling us on different types of cells and making us draw them and tell him the purpose of everything they contained. I was fascinated when he told me that all the information needed to generate a living thing as complex as a human was something as small as a genome, something we can’t even see! My interest in biology just expanded from then on and when I finished my degree, I went to Madrid to take a master’s degree at the Severo Ochoa Molecular Biology Centre.
I met my current partner on that master’s course. He was writing his doctoral dissertation at the same school and we’ve been together ever since. Whilst I was doing my master’s degree, I was told that a very promising researcher, Maria Blasco (now known throughout Spain), had just arrived at the National Biotechnology Centre to train a research group focussed on studying the function of telomeres and telemerase in cancer and ageing. I went to speak to her and I still can’t believe how lucky I was to be selected to do my doctoral dissertation in her laboratory.
During this stage, I learnt all about scientific method and the fundamental mainstays of a research career: rigour, determination and hard work, a lot of hard work… Having done my PhD in Maria’s unusual lab opened many doors for me when choosing my post-doc position to develop the next stage of my career.
However, instead of continuing in the field of ageing and cancer, I followed my gut feeling to work in Neurosciences, so I went to the University of Columbia in New York to start a career focussed on Developmental Neurobiology. This stage was probably the most stimulating of my entire life intellectually because being in contact with the best scientists in the world generates an incredible atmosphere that is contagious and really brings out the best in you.
When I returned to Spain, I joined the Institute of Neurosciences in Alicante that was just starting up and was giving young researchers the chance to set up their own research groups. The Institute has been a fantastic place to develop the line of research we have been working on for almost fourteen years. For a Neuroscientist, working here is ideal due to interactions with other molecular, cellular, evolutionist, geneticist biologists, etc. but also working alongside mathematicians, computer programmers, physicists, psychologists or doctors that approach the study of the brain from different perspectives.
After all these years as a researcher, I know that I chose the right profession, I love my job and what’s more, I have had the great advantage of being able to count on advice, support and help from my partner and family throughout my career, which is really fundamental to be able to work in this field.
ERC Project: “WIRINGVISION”
One fundamental characteristic of developing neuronal circuits is their capacity to change in response to sensory experience. This phenomenon has been particularly observed when generating cortical maps where altering the pattern of the sensory experience modifies the spatial organisation of sensory representations. The mechanisms underlying this form of plasticity include synaptic modification, such as long-term potentiation and long term depression, classically known as Hebbian-based rules. Nowadays, there is increasing evidence that before sensory experience, the neuronal electrical activity plays a role in early brain development. In several developing circuits, such as the retina, spinal fluid, the hippocampus and the cortex, transitory events take place that make these circuits spontaneously generate correlated activity waves.
(….) The first part of this proposal looks at primary development events where the independent sensory factors describe a first draft of neuronal connections. The second part will determine how far the wiring in the cortical maps depends on the formation of early thalamus properties and how this wiring can be modified through experience for optimum information processing.
