Last Tuesday July 30th, 2019, at 11:00 at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Barcelona, Fran López-Caballero defended his thesis entitled: Evoked and induced activity in the auditory nervous system: deviance detection and brainwave entrainment. The thesis was supervised by Dr. Carles Escera, head of Brainlab, and carried out in part in collaboration with Prof. David Bartrés-Faz, head of the Brain Stimulation Lab of our University. Fran also had some thesis visit to Prof. Gavin Bidelman, Institute for Intelligent Systems, University of Memphis (TN, USA).
The thesis was carried out under the Biomedicine PhD program of the University of Barcelona, and was submitted as a compendium of the following publications:
López-Caballero, F., Zarnowiec, K., & Escera, C. (2016). Differential deviant probability effects on two hierarchical levels of the auditory novelty system. Biological Psychology, 120, 1-9.
López-Caballero, F. & Escera, C. (2017). Binaural beat: A failure to enhance EEG power and emotional arousal. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 11, 557.
López-Caballero, F., Martin-Trias, P., Ribas-Prats, T., Gorina-Careta, N., Bartrés-Faz, D., & Escera, C. (2019). Effects pf cTBS on the frequency-following response and other auditory evoked potentials. Scientific Reports, submitted.
After the defense and a thoughtful discussion given by the candidate, now Dr. Fran López-Caballero, and the panel members (Chair: Dr. Piia Astikainen, University of Jyväskylä, Finland; Dr. Flora Antunes, University of Salamanca, Spain; Dr. Jordi Costa-Faidella, University of Barcelona), the thesis was given the highest grade at our university: Excel.lent Cum Laude.
Congratulations to Fran, he did a very professional PhD work, and an irrefutable defense!
