I was born in Madrid in 1974 and lived in Spain until I finished my doctorate in Neuroscience and moved to France for my postdoc. That was in June 2005 and that’s where I get married. From France I moved to India, again for a postdoc position. That was in July 2007 and that’s where my two children were born. After my postdoctoral researcher position ended in 2011 I remained living in India, taking care of my family while continuing to think about neuroscience and to experiment with music, all at my own rhythm and risk. I left my beautiful Indian home on August 2019 and since then I live in Madrid.

As an undergraduate student I joined the research team of Prof Maria-Paz Viveros at the Complutense University School of Biology in Madrid. I worked on her project addressing some of the behavioral effects produced by opioid and cannabinoid administration in young rats.

During the summer of my final year at the University I received a fellowship to spend two months with the team of Dr Arrilton Araújo de Souza at the Department of Physiology at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte in Natal, Brazil. Being trained in several behavioral tests on rats living for their whole life in cages at the Animalarium of the University, it was a heartwarming experience working on observing how small monkeys behave in their natural habitat in Brazil.

Just after my Brazilian adventure I joined the group led by Prof José Borrell at the Cajal Institute of Neuroscience in Madrid for my PhD. Prof Borrell had set up a behavioral assay in rats at the Institute to test his hypothesis of an immune prenatal challenge as a factor to develop Schizophrenia later on in life. During my PhD I tested countless rats in this behavioral paradigm, evaluating biochemical anomalies in their brains and their blood, at the same time as learning about the incredibly challenging reality that people with Schizophrenia perceive.

I remember the time I spent working at the Cajal Institute as one of the most enjoyable and satisfying ones of my professional experience. But it was during my postdoc under the supervision of Dr Frederic Flamant at the École Normale Supérieure in Lyon, France, when I marveled at the beauty of the brain under the fluorescence microscope with my own eyes, looking at the cerebellum of mice expressing different mutations in thyroid hormone receptors.

I never really got used to working with rats and mice. Their tender red eyes when we exchanged a glance during the experiments always made me feel very uncomfortable and therefore I decided to change animal model for my next postdoc. That was what propelled me to join the laboratory of Dr Sandhya Koushika at the Department of Neurobiology at the National Center for Biological Sciences (NCBS) in Bangalore, India. Not only the elegant worm model in which I had to be trained was a challenge to me but everything else from my everyday life was too, the spicy food, the flashy colors, the strong smells and the sounds of Indian life and its rich musical culture.

At the NCBS I worked with C elegans expressing different mutations for microtubule and motor proteins in mechanosensory neurons. Thanks to the mechanosensation ability of these worms, I had the honor to conclude my lab working life with a two months stay during the summer of 2011 at the laboratory of the Laureate Nobel Prize Prof Martin Chalfie at Columbia University, New York.

Once I was no longer working in a lab I began to write a book using art and Indian classical music to understand neuroscience. But what started as a metaphor has been gaining more and more meaning to me over the years and I am currently deeply immersed in exploring the connection between neurons and sound that the Indian musical culture intuitively knows since ancient times.

The classical music of India is based on the concept of Raga and is aimed to inspire pure emotion in the minds of those who listen. I was and am fascinated by this concept but to understand what a raga is listening was not enough for me. I therefore decided to learn it from a music teacher. During my life in India Mm Vrinda Raghavendra was patiently teaching me Carnatic music for more than 3 years in person and she continues now online, and for the last 2 years Mr Umakanth Puranik introduced me to play harmonium and to Hindustani ragas. I am so grateful to have found such excellent teachers, and although I still have so much to learn I really enjoyed my lessons. If you’d like to know more about my musical adventure watch the video that my daughter took in an event that my harmonium teacher organised for his students to meet each other. The raga is Yaman.

Thank you for reading!

Eva