María del Carmen Garcia de Soria

At present, I am pursuing a PhD in Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Aberdeen, under the supervision of Dr Anastasia Klimovich-Gray.

My academic journey began with a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology in 2016, followed by the completion of a Master’s degree in Neuroscience in 2021 at the University of Granada. During this time I joined Prof Rosario Rueda’s team, focusing on investigating the development of early neural correlates of cognitive abilities such as attention and self-control in infancy. In 2021, I expanded my research experience in the UK by joining Dr. Elena Geangu’s team as a Research Assistant at the University of York. Here, I contributed to the study of early executive functions and the development of tools, methods, and models aimed at predicting healthy brain development in infants.

My current research is focused on the cognitive and neural interplay between music training, speech processing, and memory, with a practical goal of understanding how music training can also help children with their reading abilities. In the long term, this work will help to develop intervention tools for stimulating typical phonological awareness in children who struggle with reading.

I became a member of SRUK/CERU in 2023, and from November 2023 I joined the SRUK/CERU radio team.