Cuban Neurosciences Center

The Cuban Neurosciencies Center (CNEURO) is located in Playa, Ciudad de la Habana province. It was founded in 1969 as one of the first groups in the world to use informatics for the analysis of the brain`s electrical activity. The Cuban Neuroscience Center was officially established in 1990 and it was considered as an independent unit on January 1,, 2005. Nowadays CNEURO is one of the institutions of the Scientific Pole devoted to the development of technology and the carry out of basic researches closely related and according to the main mental health problems of Cuban population.

Main researchers

• Dr. Mitchell Valdes Sosa
• Dr. Pedro Antonio Valdes-Sosa
• Dr. Nelson Trujillo
• Dr. Alfredo Alvarez
• Dra. Maria A. Bobes
• Dra. Maria Cecilia Perez Abalo
• Dra. Ana Maria Riveron

CNEURO`s Main Achievements

1- Execution of several medical projects with high social impact (covering important population groups) related to disabilities caused by neural dysfunction such as:

• Inclusion of methods for the early detection of hearing loss in children.
• Introduction in Cuba, along with other institutions, of the cochlear implant technology to restore hearing to deaf and more recently to deaf-blind.
• Inclusion of different methods to diagnose and carry out epidemiological studies on learning disabilities and behavior in school children.
• Development of epidemiological studies on autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders.
• Development of epidemiological studies and new early detection methods related to dementias and Alzheimer's disease.
• Improvement of psychiatric diagnosis, along with the Cuban Public Health Ministry, with emphasis on schizophrenia, and at the same time development of other epidemiological studies about this disease.
• Development of microorganism’s rapid typification methods for molecular epidemiology and the establishment of appropriate technology.

2 - Development of strategic cutting-edge researches on current neuroscience issues such as:

• Acquisition of knowledge on the basic mechanisms underlying mental processes such as face recognition, selective attention, and emotions.
• New neuroimages processing methods including brain electrical tomography, images fusion methods in different modalities (e.g. MRI and EEG) and different methods to study brain connectivity.
• Characterization of the basic psychological and neural processes maturation in schoolchildren.
• New methods to characterize the sensory auditory and visual processes.
• Macromolecular biophysics.

3 – Development of products, medical equipments, specialized software and other resources for the neurophysiologic diagnostic. CNEURO licenses these products to NEURONIC SA. , that is responsible for the production and marketing of these products.

4 - Coordination of the National Program in Science and Technology for neurosciences and neurobiology emerging technologies.

5– Development of care for the country`s National Network of Clinical Neurophysiology Laboratories (57) and provision of technical assistance services. The network was created with technology developed by CNEURO.

6 - Functioning as the only unit authorized by the Ministry of Public Health for the Clinical Neurophysiology residency. In response to post grade`s requests from neurologists, neurophysiologists, psychiatrists, educators and defectologists it has also received post-doctoral students from Germany, Japan and Switzerland.

7- Development of a Neuroscience Master Program authorized by the Cuban Higher Education Ministry.

8 -Coordination of the National Cochlear Implant Program for deaf and deaf blind patients generated by our center and developed in collaboration with institutions of the Ministry of Public Health and the Ministry of Higher Education.

9- Generation of new knowledge and international contributions through a new patent portfolio in some countries such as, USA and South Africa. Furthermore, there is a great amount of scientific publications on high impact magazines which are registered in an international data base.

Main Publications

1. N400 deficits from semantic matching of pictures in probands and first-degree relatives from multiplex schizophrenia families.Guerra S, Ibáñez A, Martín M, Bobes MA, Reyes A, Mendoza R, Bravo T, Domínguez M, Sosa MV.Brain Cogn. 2009 Jul;70(2):221-30.
2. N400 deficits from semantic matching of pictures in probands and first-degree relatives from multiplex schizophrenia families.Guerra S, Ibáñez A, Martín M, Bobes MA, Reyes A, Mendoza R, Bravo T, Domínguez M, Sosa MV.Brain Cogn. 2009 Jul;70(2):221-30.
3. Friston, K., Mattout, J., Trujillo-Barreto, N., Ashburner, J., and Penny, W.Variational free energy and the Laplace approximation.NeuroImage 2007;34(1)220-234.
4. Sotero, R. C. and Trujillo-Barreto, N. J.Modelling the role of excitatory and inhibitory neuronal activity in the generation of the BOLD signal.NeuroImage2007;
5. Sotero, R. C., Trujillo-Barreto, N. J., Iturria-Medina, Y., Carbonell, F., and Jimenez, J. C.Realistically coupled neural mass models can generate EEGrhythms.Neural Comput. 2007;19(2)478-512.
6. Riera, J. J., Valdes, P. A., Tanabe, K., and Kawashima, R.A theoretical formulation of the electrophysiological inverse problem on the sphere.Physics in Medicine and Biology2006;51(7)1737-1758
7. Penny, W. D., Trujillo-Barreto, N. J., and Friston, K. J.Bayesian fMRI time series analysis with spatial priors.NeuroImage2005;24(2)350-362
8. Riera, J., Aubert, E., Iwata, K., Kawashima, R., Wan, X., and Ozaki, T.Fusing EEG and fMRI based on a bottom-up model: inferring activation and effective connectivity in neural masses.Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences2005;360(1457)1025-1041
9. Penny, W. D., Trujillo-Barreto N, and Flandin G.Bayesian analysis of single-subject fMRI data: SPM5 implementation.Technical report, Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience.2005 Published on the Internet2005;
10. Trujillo-Barreto, N. J., Aubert-Vazquez, E., and Valdes-Sosa, P. A.Bayesian model averaging in EEG/MEG imaging.NeuroImage2004;21(4)1300-1319.
11. Riera, J. J., Watanabe, J., Kazuki, T., Naoki, M., Aubert, E., Ozaki, T., and Kawashima, R.A state-space model of the hemodynamic approach: nonlinear filtering of BOLD signals.NeuroImage2004;21(2)547-567
12. Hubl, D., Koenig, T., Strik, W. K., Garcia, L. M., and Dierks, T.Competition for neuronal resources: how hallucinations makethemselvesheard.Br.JPsychiatry2007;190(5762.
13. Koenig, T., Studer, D., Hubl, D., Melie, L., and Strik, W. K.Brain connectivity at different time-scales measured with EEG.Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 2005;360(1457)1015-1023.
14. Melie-Garcia, L., Trujillo-Barreto N, Koenig, T., and Martinez E.Bayesian Model Averaging in EEG/MEG imaging in individual brain anatomy.NeuroImage2004;22(CD)We 243-
15. Melie-Garcia, L., Trujillo-Barreto N, Martinez E, Koenig, T., Valdes-Sosa, P., and Friston KJ.EEg imaging via BMA with FMRI pre-defined prior model probabilities.NeuroImage2004;22(CD)We 245-
16. Melie-Garcia, L., Canales E, and Valdes-Hernandez P.Anisotropy Characterization in diffusion Weighted MRI via reversible jump MCMC.NeuroImage2004;22(CD)Poster We 241-
17. Durka, P. J., Matysiak, A., Montes, E. M., Sosa, P. V., and Blinowska, K. J.Multichannel matching pursuit and EEG inverse solutions.Journal of Neuroscience Methods2005;148(1)49-59
18. Marti-Lopez, F.Generalized approximating splitting iterations for solving linear least squares problems in finite dimensions.Computational and Applied Mathematics (Brasil)2005;24(2)1-16
19. Valdes-Sosa, P. A., Kotter, R., and Friston, K. J. Introduction: multimodal neuroimaging of brain connectivity.Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences2005;360(1457)865-867
20. Valdes-Sosa, P. A., Sanchez-Bornot, J. M., Lage-Castellanos, A., Vega-Hernandez, M., Bosch-Bayard, J., Melie-Garcia, L., and Canales-Rodriguez, E.Estimating brain functional connectivity with sparse multivariate autoregression.Philos.Trans R Soc.Lond B Biol.Sci.2005;360(1457)969-981
21. Aguilar-Fabre, L., Morgade-Fonte, R. M., Rodriguez-Valdes, R., and Alvarez-Amador, A.Deterioro cognitivo en la epilepsia.rev Mex Neuroci2006;7(3)218-224
22. Rodriguez R, Alvarez-Amador, A., and Aguilar-Fabre, L.Factores vasculares y enfermedad de Alzheimer.rev Mex Neuroci2006;7(3)225-230.
23. Lopez-Canovas, L., Bravo, L., Herrera, J., Riveron, A. M., Javer, E., Sanchez, A., Fando, R., Noa, M. D., and Fernandez, A.DNA fingerprinting of Vibrio cholerae and Aeromonas species by pulsed-field minigel electrophoresis.Electrophoresis2006;27(14)2857-2864
24. Clarke DH, Perez-Bello D, Riveron-Rojas AM, Jimenez-Aleman G, Acosta MZ, Perera RP, Carrazana MS, Miranda ND, Rodriguez-Tanty C, Calzado EG, 2005. Non-enzymatic in vitro DNA labeling and label immunoquantification. Preparative Biochemistry&Biotechnology35:1-15.
25. Rodriguez, V. and Valdes-Sosa, M.Sensory suppression during shifts of attention between surfaces in transparent motion.Brain Research2006;1072(1)110-118
26. Prado-Guitierrez, P., Fewster, L. M., Heasman, J. M., McKay, C. M., and Shepherd, R. K.Effect of interphase gap and pulse duration on electrically evoked potentials is correlated with auditory nerve survival.Hear.Res.2006;215(1-2)47-55.
27. Savio, G., Perez-Abalo, M. C., Gaya, J., Hernandez, O., and Mijares, E.Test accuracy and prognostic validity of multiple auditory steady state responses for targeted hearing screening.Int.J Audiol.2006;45(2)109-120.
28. Grimm, S., Roeber, U., Trujillo-Barreto, N. J., and Schroger, E.Mechanisms for detecting auditory temporal and spectral deviations operate over similar time windows but are divided differently between the two hemispheres.NeuroImage2006;32(1)275-282.
29. Perez-Abalo, M. C., Gaya, J. A., Savio, G., de Leon, M., Perera, M., and Reigosa, V.Early detection and intervention of hearing impairment in Cuba: Outcome after 20 years.Revista de Neurologia2005;41(9)556-563.
30. Picton, T. W., Dimitrijevic, A., Perez-Abalo, M. C., and Van Roon, P.Estimating audiometric thresholds using auditory steady-state responses.J.Am.Acad.Audiol.2005;16(3)140-156.
31. Gaya, JA, Savio G, Hernandez MC, Perez-Abalo MC, Fortuny A, and Rodriguez, L.Electroaudiometria con Potenciales Evocados Auditivos en pacientes sordociegos(Auditory Evoked Potentials Electroaudiometry in deafblind patients).Revista de Logopedia,Foniatria y audiologia (Espana)2004;24(1)16-26
32. Scale for assessing perceptual anomalies. Validation of a Spanish version of the SIAPA scale in a sample of Cuban schizophrenic patients .Mendoza Quiñones R, Martín Reyes M, Díaz de Villalvilla T, Bravo DT, Caballero Moreno A, Lomba P, Padrón Fernández A. Actas Esp Psiquiatr 2007; 35: 15-9.
33. Spanish version of the Family Interview for Genetic Studies (FIGS). Thais Díaz de Villalvilla, Raúl Mendoza, Migdyrai Martín, Nino del Castillo, Tania M. Bravo, Mayelín Domínguez y Mayrim Vega. Actas Españolas de Psiquiatría. 36(1): 20-24, 2008.
34. Reigosa V., Perez MC, Piñeiro A., and López I.Fiabilidad y validez de una batería de pruebas computarizadas (BTL) para la evaluación cognitiva de la lectura.Rev.Latina de Pensamiento Lenguage y Neuropsicología 2003;10(2)2-
35. Suarez A., De Armas J.L., Aznielle, T., and Gonzalez, M.Arquitectura de tres capas para desarrollar software de bioseñales.Ingeniería Electrónica, Automática y Comunicaciones 2005;XXVI(2)