Principal Investigator

África Flores graduated in Biochemistry at the Universitat de Barcelona (UB, 2009). She received the PhD degree in Biomedicine from Universitat Pompeu Fabra in 2016, under the supervision of Prof. Fernando Berrendero and Prof. Rafael Maldonado. Her PhD thesis aimed to elucidate the role of orexinergic signaling in reward- and aversion-based associative learning in mice, exploring the potential of orexin receptor antagonists as therapeutic targets for addiction and anxiety disorders. During this period, she performed a predoctoral stage at Dr Cyril Herry's lab at the Magendie Neurocentre (Bordeaux) to further study neural circuits of fear learning. After the PhD, she joined Dr Raül Andero's group at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) to explore the role of PACAP neuropeptide in pathological fear extinction. In 2018 she was awarded with a Juan de la Cierva contract to join the group of Neural Plasticity and Regeneration at the UAB under the mentorship of Dr Guillermo García-Alías. Her research there aimed to unravel the neural networks controlling manual dexterity and the plastic changes that these circuits undergo after spinal cord injury. She simultaneously joined the Guttmann Institute of Neurorehabilitation as a collaborator researcher, where she explored the effects of electrical neuromodulation on hand motor control. In October 2021 she joined Prof. Francisco Ciruela’s group in the Department of Pathology and Experimental Therapeutics at the UB as a Lecturer. Her current research work focuses on unraveling the potential of orexins and orexin receptors as modulators of motor control under physiological and pathological conditions.