Our proposal involves the interaction of highly interdisciplinary and innovative research groups, which is very suitable for current social and health needs.
Our present approach clearly has potential for various biomedical applications related to the effects of physical activity that are projected on the health of society, and that therefore should have a high impact on Spanish society and with a wide international impact.
Our research group has extensive experience in comparative neuroanatomic studies focused primarily on diencephalic and hypothalamic structures. However, we have recently developed a line of research with a multidisciplinary approach that aims to understand the neural bases that in a program of forced physical activity mediate specific metabolic and motor responses in rodents.
Our immediate aims are focused on understanding the neural mechanisms that determine the decrease of adipose tissue after a forced training. In addition, we are studying mechanistic aspects of the motor response during the process of habituation to exercise (Dopaminergic system).
The Nutrition research group of the University of Murcia, presents a subline devoted to the study of obesity, its treatment and associated metabolic alterations.
The team’s most important contributions have been the discovery of an internal clock in human adipose tissue and the importance of mealtime as a predictive factor of weight loss. The research as a whole is reflected in 190 publications with an average impact factor of 5.4 (index H: 47).
The research group “Brain aging and dementia” basically works on the analysis of the interaction between anxiety and cognition of laboratory animals in depends of its age, sex and time of the day.
The main goals of our group are:
1) To correlate the anxiety level with learning and memory performance with emphasis on age, sex and time of the day
2) The neuroanatomical circuitry implicated in diurnal regulation of anxiety and cognition.
3) Pharmacological approaches based on brain calcium channel activation and its influence on anxiety and memory processes.
Human Performance & Sports Science is a large multidisciplinary team with extensive experience in managingand conducting strength and conditioning training in elite and professional athletes, while researching and forming new coaches and trainers in scientific-based training methods.
Our main research lines are focused in 1) evaluation, monitoring and programming of strength and cardiorespiratory training, 2) exercise prescription for cardiovascular and metabolic health, 2) strength training, nutritional supplementation and health in aging.
We are mostly studying aspects of motivation related to behavioral activation and effort-related functions, including animal models of human symptoms.
Goal: We basically work on two tracks: 1) studying the neurochemical interactions and anatomical circuitry that regulates behavioral activation and effort-related aspects of motivation, and 2) developing procedures that can be used as animal models for studying psychopathological symptoms and developing novel drug treatments and behavioral therapeutic approaches.
Our research group focuses on the study of emotion regulation in normal and clinical population, using multiple correlates (subjective experience, physiological and behavioural measures), from a gender perspective. To this end, we have developed several paradigms to evaluate the impact of certain strategies (cognitive re-evaluation, suppression, acceptance) in laboratory settings, based on biomarkers of emotional mismatch (such as HRV) or hyperactivity of the aversive motivational system (such as startle reflex or cardiac defense response).
Likewise, we are interested in the effect of voluntary regulation and neuromodulation techniques (tDCS) on emotional reactions associated with anticipation and fear of pain, as a possible psychological mechanism of physical inactivity associated with chronic pain and other neurodegenerative pathologies characterized by negative affect, anhedonia and fatigue, which are also accompanied by anxious and depressive symptoms. We have also collaborated in research focused on the relationship between competitive sports practice and physical/psychological well-being.
Our research group explores the paradigm “exercise is medicine” in humans with a condition named metabolic syndrome. If we believe that the physiological adaptations derived from exercise improve the health of people that exercise-train, then we should be able to lower (or at least prevent from increasing) drug treatment of disease conditions. Since 2012, we have been conducting experiments to address the substitution potential of exercise training in people taking medication
Our group works on a widerange of mathematical problems, some arising from the analysis of physical problems and others related to the treatment of data, signals and images. We are interested in the numerical resolution of problems that can be modeled by ODEs (ordinary differential equations) and PDEs (partial differential equations) where sometimes the solution, the source term or some of the coefficients present discontinuities or where, simply, the application of classical methods does not work. In addition, we are interested in the construction of algorithms oriented to thetreatment of data of diversenature. Amongthem, we have worked specially oncompression algorithms, noise elimination, data subdivision (zoom), detection of discontinuities or filtering in one or several dimensions.
