Javier Oltra González

I am a postdoctoral researcher at Karolinska Institutet, currently working in the Neurodegenerative Diseases and Aging research group led by Daniel Ferreira (since 2026). I previously joined the Cognitive Aging and Mental Health group led by Erika Jonsson Laukka in 2023.

I use olfactory, cognitive, and multimodal neuroimaging data from large cohorts to investigate healthy and pathological aging, with a particular focus on Alzheimer's disease and Lewy body diseases.

I obtained my PhD in Experimental and Clinical Neurosciences from the University of Barcelona (2022), where I studied the impact of sleep disturbances and biological sex on brain atrophy and cognition in Parkinson's disease. During my PhD, I was a visiting researcher at Karolinska Institutet (2022), collaborating on sex differences projects in dementia with Lewy bodies. I subsequently held a postdoctoral position at the University of Barcelona (2022–2023).

My research focuses on brain structure and function in Alzheimer's disease, Lewy body diseases, and normal aging using multimodal neuroimaging. I am particularly interested in how different imaging modalities can be combined to better characterize early brain changes and disease-related patterns.

A central line of my work is olfactory deficits in aging and neurodegenerative diseases, including how olfactory processing relates to cognitive function and decline.  This line of research has been supported by several competitive grants, including Demensfonden (2024 and 2025), Tore Nilsons Stiftelse för medicinsk forskning (2025), Stiftelsen för Gamla Tjänarinnor (2025), Gun och Bertil Stohnes Stiftelse (2025), and the Foundation for Geriatric Diseases at Karolinska Institutet (2024). I am also interested in the brain mechanisms underlying "cognitive" olfactory functions.

In addition, I investigate sex differences in brain organization and clinical expression across aging and neurodegeneration, with the aim of better understanding variability in disease presentation and progression.