Carles Escera
Senior Staff
Research ID: A-8658-2010
Keywords: attention; auditory perception; brain waves; brain rhythms; predictive coding; EEG.
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Carles Escera graduated in Psychology in 1987 and defended his PhD thesis in 1993 at the University of Barcelona, and had his postdoc at the University of Helsinki (Finland).
He became Associate Professor in 1997 and since 2010 he is Full Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience. He was visiting professor at the University of Bremen (Germany) and Fellow of the Hanse Wissenschaftskolleg in Delmenhorst (Germany) in 2004 and 2005.
His research is set to understand the mysteries of the mind by deciphering the mechanisms of brain function, including those of attention, auditory perception, musical processing, and emotion, and how these mechanisms are disrupted in brain disorders such as autism or schizophrenia, and mature during natural development.
He leads the Brainlab at University of Barcelona, using a methodological approach based on the recording of brain waves (EEG) and complemented with magnetoencephalography (MEG), functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) and genetic analysis.
His current research is driven by the idea that even deep structures within the brain, such as the auditory midbrain, play a critical role in auditory cognition, contributing to speech, music and rhythm perception.
He has become recently interested in two other aspects of brain function: neurocognitive development from birth to the age of two, and in altered states of consciousness, such as those produced during mystic rituals.
RELEVANT PUBLICATIONS
EMOTION-BRAIN OSCILLATIONS
Costa-Faidella, J., Sussman, E. S., & Escera, C. (2017). Selective entrainment of brain oscillations drives auditory perceptual organization. NeuroImage, 159 195-206.
López-Caballero, F., & Escera, C. (2017). Binaural beat: A failure to enhance EEG power and emotional arousal. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 11, 557.
Selinger, A. L., Domínguez-Borràs, J., & Escera, C. (2013). Phasic boosting of auditory processing by visually induced emotion. Biological Psychology, 94, 471-478.
Domínguez-Borràs, J., Garcia-Garcia, M., & Escera, C. (2012). Phase re-setting of gamma neural oscillations during novelty processing in an appetitive context. Biological Psychology, 89, 545-552.
AUDITORY PERCEPTION
Cacciaglia, R., Costa-Faidella, J., Zarnowiec, K., Grimm, S., & Escera, C. (2019). Auditory predictions shape the neural rsponses to stimulus repetition and sensory change. Neuroimage, 186, 200-210.
Malmierca, M. S., Niño-Aguillón, B., Nieto-Diego, J., Porteros, A., Pérez-Gonzálex, D., & Escera, C. (2019). Pattern-sensitive neurons reveal encoding of complex auditory regularities in the rat inferior colliculus. Neuroimage, 184, 889-900.
Selinger, L., Zarnowiek, K., Via, M., Clemente, I. C., & Escera, C. (2016). Involvement of the serotonin transporter gene in accurate subcortical speech encoding. Journal of Neuroscience, 36 (42), 10782-10790.
Recasens, M., Grimm, S., Capilla, A., Nowak, R., & Escera, C. (2014). Two sequential processes of change detection in hierarchically ordered areas of the human auditory cortex. Cerebral Cortex, 24, 143-153.