Alvaro Pascual-Leone
Biographic Data
| ID | 1846971 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alvaro Pascual-Leone |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alvaro |
| FAMILY NAME | Pascual-Leone |
| SIGNATURE | PASCUAL-LEONE A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Harvard University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8975-0382 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 25 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The Healthy Aging Initiative (HAI): An interdisciplinary longitudinal cohort study to characterize and promote healthspan in senior housing
Objective: We present the rationale, design, and methods for the Healthy Aging Initiative (HAI), a prospective longitudinal cohort study of older adults primarily residing in senior housing, aimed to identify and characterize factors associated with a prolonged healthspan in this population. Methods: The HAI, developed with input from experts at the Marcus Institute for Aging Research and informed by a pilot study, includes a community engaged re…
Use of Multiple Languages Provides Cognitive Reserve Amidst Age-Related White Matter Changes
Objectives Bilingualism can stimulate brain plasticity and is often associated with better executive function. We investigated whether language usage was related to the volume of white matter lesions in a cohort of middle-aged to older adults with different multilingual characteristics, including monolingualism in daily life (use of one language), bilingualism (use of two languages), and multilingualism (active use of 3 languages, i.e., Catalan, …
Lifestyle trajectories in middle-aged adults and their relationship with health indicators
Introduction Understanding the impact of different lifestyle trajectories on health preservation and disease risk is crucial for effective interventions. Methods This study analyzed lifestyle engagement over five years in 3,013 healthy adults aged 40-70 from the Barcelona Brain Health Initiative using K-means clustering. Nine modifiable risk factors were considered, including cognitive, physical, and social activity, vital plan, diet, obesity, sm…
Multichannel tDCS with advanced targeting for major depressive disorder: A tele-supervised at-home pilot study
https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05205915?tab=results, identifier NCT05205915
Brain Connectivity Correlates of Cognitive Dispersion in a Healthy Middle-Aged Population: Influence of Subjective Cognitive Complaints
In healthy middle-aged individuals, high cognitive dispersion was related to poorer cognition and DMN dysregulation, being these associations stronger among subjects with high SCC. The present results reinforce the interest in considering dispersion measures within neuropsychological evaluations, as they may be more sensitive to incipient age-related cognitive and functional brain changes than traditional measures of performance
Intelligent Coaching Assistant for the Promotion of Healthy Habits in a Multidomain mHealth-Based Intervention for Brain Health
Brain Health is defined as the development and preservation of optimal brain integrity and neural network functioning for a given age. Recent studies have related healthy habits with better maintenance of brain health across the lifespan. As a part of the Barcelona Brain Health Initiative (BBHI), a mHealth platform has been developed with the purpose of helping people to improve and monitor their healthy habits, facilitating the delivery of healt…
Brain stimulation and brain lesions converge on common causal circuits in neuropsychiatric disease
Speech Perception Triggers Articulatory Action: Evidence From Mechanical Stimulation
Neuroimaging studies show that the brain articulatory motor system is activated during speech perception. These results, however, cannot determine whether the motor system is engaged in motor simulation (e.g., lip movement) or in non-motor computations. To gauge the causal role of the articulatory motor system, here we examine the effect of mechanical stimulation. Participants heard speech tokens, ambiguous with respect to voicing—either labial (…
Resting-state connectivity biomarkers define neurophysiological subtypes of depression
Differential Pharmacological Effects on Brain Reactivity and Plasticity in Alzheimer’s Disease
Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (AChEIs) are the most commonly prescribed monotherapeutic medications for Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, their underlying neurophysiological effects remain largely unknown. We investigated the effects of monotherapy (AChEI) and combination therapy (AChEI and memantine) on brain reactivity and plasticity. Patients treated with monotherapy (AChEI) (N = 7) were compared to patients receiving combination therapy (C…
Modulation of Untruthful Responses with Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation
Deceptive abilities have long been studied in relation to personality traits. More recently, studies explored the neural substrates associated with deceptive skills suggesting a critical role of the prefrontal cortex. Here we investigated whether non-invasive brain stimulation over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) could modulate generation of untruthful responses about subject's personal life across contexts (i.e., deceiving on guilt-fr…
Transcranial direct current stimulation of the prefrontal cortex modulates the desire for specific foods
Diminishing Reciprocal Fairness by Disrupting the Right Prefrontal Cortex
Humans restrain self-interest with moral and social values. They are the only species known to exhibit reciprocal fairness, which implies the punishment of other individuals' unfair behaviors, even if it hurts the punisher's economic self-interest. Reciprocal fairness has been demonstrated in the Ultimatum Game, where players often reject their bargaining partner's unfair offers. Despite progress in recent years, however, little is known about ho…
The Plastic Human Brain Cortex
Plasticity is an intrinsic property of the human brain and represents evolution's invention to enable the nervous system to escape the restrictions of its own genome and thus adapt to environmental pressures, physiologic changes, and experiences. Dynamic shifts in the strength of preexisting connections across distributed neural networks, changes in task-related cortico-cortical and cortico-subcortical coherence and modifications of the mapping b…
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation: A Neurochronometrics of Mind (Bradford Books)
Ethical Guidelines for rTMS Research
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a technique introduced in 19851 that uses the principle of inductance to get electrical energy across the scalp and skull in order to produce changes in neural activity in the brain. It involves placing a small coil of wire on the calp and passing a very brief and powerful current through it. This produces a magnetic field that passes unimpeded through the tissues of the head. The magnetic field, in turn…
Ethical Guidelines for rTMS Research
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a technique introduced in 19851 that uses the principle of inductance to get electrical energy across the scalp and skull in order to produce changes in neural activity in the brain. It involves placing a small coil of wire on the calp and passing a very brief and powerful current through it. This produces a magnetic field that passes unimpeded through the tissues of the head. The magnetic field, in turn…
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation: A Neurochronometrics of Mind (Bradford Books)
The Plastic Human Brain Cortex
Plasticity is an intrinsic property of the human brain and represents evolution's invention to enable the nervous system to escape the restrictions of its own genome and thus adapt to environmental pressures, physiologic changes, and experiences. Dynamic shifts in the strength of preexisting connections across distributed neural networks, changes in task-related cortico-cortical and cortico-subcortical coherence and modifications of the mapping b…
Diminishing Reciprocal Fairness by Disrupting the Right Prefrontal Cortex
Humans restrain self-interest with moral and social values. They are the only species known to exhibit reciprocal fairness, which implies the punishment of other individuals' unfair behaviors, even if it hurts the punisher's economic self-interest. Reciprocal fairness has been demonstrated in the Ultimatum Game, where players often reject their bargaining partner's unfair offers. Despite progress in recent years, however, little is known about ho…
Transcranial direct current stimulation of the prefrontal cortex modulates the desire for specific foods
Differential Pharmacological Effects on Brain Reactivity and Plasticity in Alzheimer’s Disease
Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (AChEIs) are the most commonly prescribed monotherapeutic medications for Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, their underlying neurophysiological effects remain largely unknown. We investigated the effects of monotherapy (AChEI) and combination therapy (AChEI and memantine) on brain reactivity and plasticity. Patients treated with monotherapy (AChEI) (N = 7) were compared to patients receiving combination therapy (C…
Modulation of Untruthful Responses with Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation
Deceptive abilities have long been studied in relation to personality traits. More recently, studies explored the neural substrates associated with deceptive skills suggesting a critical role of the prefrontal cortex. Here we investigated whether non-invasive brain stimulation over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) could modulate generation of untruthful responses about subject's personal life across contexts (i.e., deceiving on guilt-fr…
Resting-state connectivity biomarkers define neurophysiological subtypes of depression
Speech Perception Triggers Articulatory Action: Evidence From Mechanical Stimulation
Neuroimaging studies show that the brain articulatory motor system is activated during speech perception. These results, however, cannot determine whether the motor system is engaged in motor simulation (e.g., lip movement) or in non-motor computations. To gauge the causal role of the articulatory motor system, here we examine the effect of mechanical stimulation. Participants heard speech tokens, ambiguous with respect to voicing—either labial (…
Intelligent Coaching Assistant for the Promotion of Healthy Habits in a Multidomain mHealth-Based Intervention for Brain Health
Brain Health is defined as the development and preservation of optimal brain integrity and neural network functioning for a given age. Recent studies have related healthy habits with better maintenance of brain health across the lifespan. As a part of the Barcelona Brain Health Initiative (BBHI), a mHealth platform has been developed with the purpose of helping people to improve and monitor their healthy habits, facilitating the delivery of healt…
Brain stimulation and brain lesions converge on common causal circuits in neuropsychiatric disease
Brain Connectivity Correlates of Cognitive Dispersion in a Healthy Middle-Aged Population: Influence of Subjective Cognitive Complaints
In healthy middle-aged individuals, high cognitive dispersion was related to poorer cognition and DMN dysregulation, being these associations stronger among subjects with high SCC. The present results reinforce the interest in considering dispersion measures within neuropsychological evaluations, as they may be more sensitive to incipient age-related cognitive and functional brain changes than traditional measures of performance
Lifestyle trajectories in middle-aged adults and their relationship with health indicators
Introduction Understanding the impact of different lifestyle trajectories on health preservation and disease risk is crucial for effective interventions. Methods This study analyzed lifestyle engagement over five years in 3,013 healthy adults aged 40-70 from the Barcelona Brain Health Initiative using K-means clustering. Nine modifiable risk factors were considered, including cognitive, physical, and social activity, vital plan, diet, obesity, sm…
Multichannel tDCS with advanced targeting for major depressive disorder: A tele-supervised at-home pilot study
https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05205915?tab=results, identifier NCT05205915
The Healthy Aging Initiative (HAI): An interdisciplinary longitudinal cohort study to characterize and promote healthspan in senior housing
Objective: We present the rationale, design, and methods for the Healthy Aging Initiative (HAI), a prospective longitudinal cohort study of older adults primarily residing in senior housing, aimed to identify and characterize factors associated with a prolonged healthspan in this population. Methods: The HAI, developed with input from experts at the Marcus Institute for Aging Research and informed by a pilot study, includes a community engaged re…
Use of Multiple Languages Provides Cognitive Reserve Amidst Age-Related White Matter Changes
Objectives Bilingualism can stimulate brain plasticity and is often associated with better executive function. We investigated whether language usage was related to the volume of white matter lesions in a cohort of middle-aged to older adults with different multilingual characteristics, including monolingualism in daily life (use of one language), bilingualism (use of two languages), and multilingualism (active use of 3 languages, i.e., Catalan, …
Psychology (13 works) · Neuroscience (11 works) · Medicine (9 works) · Stimulation (7 works) · Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Studies (7 works) · Cognition (6 works) · Disease (5 works) · Transcranial magnetic stimulation (5 works) · Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (4 works) · Functional Brain Connectivity Studies (4 works)