Roberto de la Torre Martinez

Roberto de la Torre Martinez

Research Specialist
Visiting address: Solnavägen 9 - kvarter B8, 17165 Solna
Postal address: C4 Neurovetenskap, C4 Forskning Silberberg, 171 77 Stockholm
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About me

  • I received my Ph.D. from the University Miguel Hernandez of Elche, Spain,
    under the supervision of Professor Antonio Ferrer-Montiel. In my thesis, I
    studied the activity and modulation of several ion channels from the TRP
    family responsible for the transduction of noxious stimuli (TRPV1, TRPM8, and
    TRPA1). We described potential analgesics for combating chronic pain using
    electrophysiological techniques such as /in vitro/ whole-cell patch-clamp
    and microelectrode array recordings (MEA) in the dorsal root ganglia neurons
    that led to three patents and multiple publications in high-impact
    journals.
    In my first postdoc, I joined Ramon Reig’s laboratory at the Institute
    of Neuroscience of Alicante, Spain, where we studied the impact of dopamine
    on the modulation of sensory responses in the medium spiny neurons (MSNs)
    located in the dorsomedial striatum (DMS). We found that dopamine enhances
    the efficiency of striatal MSNs in the DMS to integrate visual and tactile
    information.
    Next, I joined Gilad Silberberg’s laboratory at Karolinska Institutet.
    Here, we studied sensory-motor interactions in the dorsolateral striatum of
    awake healthy and parkinsonian mice. Using the patch-clamp recordings /in
    vivo/ in behaving animals, we showed that neurons respond to both sensory
    stimuli and spontaneous whisking and that sensory responses are attenuated by
    whisker-related motor activity. We also showed that dopamine depletion
    affected both sensory and motor striatal representations in parkinsonian
    mice. These findings are published in Nat. Communications

Research

  • Currently, I study the claustrum (CLA), a small brain region implicated in a
    wide range of functions such as awareness, consciousness, salience reporting,
    memory consolidation, attention, regulation of cortical sleep waves, and
    impulse control. Here, we combined /in vivo/ multiunit silicon probe
    recordings in awake mice, /ex vivo/ paired whole-cell patch-clamp
    recordings, optogenetics, and pharmacology to investigate the organizing
    principles and targets of CLA projections to the Anterior Cingulate Cortex.

Articles

All other publications

Grants

  • Synaptic connectivity of claustrum neurons projecting to the anterior cingulate cortex
    Strategic Research Program in Neuroscience (StratNeuro)
    1 January 2023 - 31 December 2023
  • University Miguel Hernandez - Spanish Government
    1 January 2022 - 31 December 2023
  • Neuromodulatory effects of kappa opioid receptors in the claustrum microcircuit
    Karolinska Institutet
    1 January 2022 - 31 May 2023

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