Affiliation: Barcelonabeta Brain Research Center, Barcelona
Keywords: Cognitive reserve, aging, Alzheimer’s, lifestyle, mental health, brain imaging, brain resilience
Full profile:
Dr. Eider M. Arenaza-Urquijo is Team Leader at Barcelonabeta Brain Research Center (Barcelona, Spain) and Research Associate at ISGlobal (Barcelona, Spain). She is currently an investigator of the National Ramón y Cajal Programme (Spain). Arenaza-Urquijo obtained her PhD at University of Barcelona (2009-13) and worked several years in the the National Institute of Research in France (INSERM, 2011, 2013-2017). She was Visiting Researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, US, (2015-16) and Research Fellow and collaborator at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, US (2018-).
Dr. Arenaza-Urquijo has extensive experience working about cognitive reserve and brain resilience with multimodal neuroimaging and with a focus on lifestyles and mental health. She is ranked #3 cognitive reserve expert in Europe and #10 worlwide (expertscape). Dr. Arenaza-Urquijo is the Vice Chair of the Professional Area of Interest “Reserve, Resilience and protective factors” of the Alzheimer’s association and Co-Chair of the ADDRESS Group! to investigate resilience differences by gender and ethnicity. She currently leads several projects focusing on the effects of lifestyle and mental health variables on brain health in aging and Alzheimer’s disease and successful aging. Her previous studies support that modifiable factors including cognitive activities, exercise and stress play a role in the development of Alzheimer’s pathologies and in brain resilience. Finally, her recent work identified resilience brain signatures that combined with Alzheimer’s disease imaging biomarkers, improve clinical prognosis in older adults.