- Álvaro Pascual-Leone, Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, will be the ‘Speaker of Honor’ at ‘BioMed&TechTalks’: Your appointment with research and innovation (April 8-11, Granada).
- “Manipulating the brain will be commonplace in a decade,” says Pascual-Leone.
The Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, Álvaro Pascual-Leone, will be the Honorary Speaker at the BioMedicine and BioTechnology (BM&TTalks) event, which will take place from April 8 to 11 in Granada to commemorate World Health Day and World Health Week.
“Manipulating the brain will be commonplace in a decade,” says Pascual-Leone, who assures that there are other companies more advanced than Elon Musk’s, which boasts of having been the first to implant a chip in a human brain.
Thus, the brain, brain health and neurotechnology will be the protagonists of the first edition of the “BioMed & Tech Talks”, which for four days will bring together researchers, experts, directors and managers of hospitals, multinational and national pharmaceutical companies, and communicators from the United States, Europe and Latin America.
“We are at the tip of the iceberg of technology, we have not yet realized the great mass that is still submerged. But its development will be exponentially rapid and neurotechnology will become more and more specific and selective. I would be surprised if within a decade we do not have routine use of neurotechnologies in the clinic for certain indications,” says Pascual-Leone, who predicts that precision medicine “will make it possible to reduce or eliminate the use of drugs.
For the neuroscientist, “advances in biotechnology, neuroscience, nanotechnology, genetic engineering and artificial intelligence seem to remain science fiction, but they are already present, so urgent ethical and scientific questions need to be addressed as technologies make it possible to change individual lifestyles and society as a whole.”
BM&TTalks’ is supported by the Fundación Progreso y Salud (FPS), of the Consejería de Salud y Consumo of the Junta de Andalucía, and representatives of the World Health Organization (WHO), the European Commission, Farmaindustria, the Andalusian Health Service (SAS), the Spanish Association of Biocompanies (ASEBIO) and associations of health communicators have already confirmed their participation.
An eminence of neuroscience
Dr. Alvaro Pascual-Leone is a renowned Spanish neuroscientist and neurologist known for his significant contributions to the field of cognitive neuroscience and neurology. Born in Valencia in 1961, Pascual-Leone has had a distinguished career in research and teaching at some of the world’s leading academic centers.
Specializing in neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to reorganize and adapt to new circumstances or injury, his research has helped advance understanding of how the brain changes in response to experience, injury or stimulation. He has used techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and non-invasive brain stimulation to explore brain plasticity in different neurological and psychiatric conditions.
Pascual-Leone has been a professor at several leading institutions, including Harvard Medical School, where he has played a major role in the development of neuroscience research and education programs. In addition, he is founder of the Berenson-Allen Center for Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Massachusetts, medical director of the Wolk Center for Brain Health and Memory and senior investigator at the Marcus Institute for Healthy Aging at Hebrew SeniorLife in Boston. Pascual-Leone has published numerous scientific articles and books, and his work has had a significant impact on fields such as cognitive neuroscience, neurological rehabilitation, clinical neurology and psychiatry.
In addition to his academic work, Pascual-Leone has been recognized for his commitment to education and science outreach, and for being a passionate advocate for the importance of basic neuroscience research to improve the understanding and treatment of a wide range of neurological and psychiatric disorders.
Innovative format for a high-level event
The Granada Health Technology Park will host the first edition of ‘BioMed&Tech Talks’: Your appointment with research and innovation, a new independent, transversal, international and multidisciplinary event that from April 8 to 11, 2024, coinciding with the World Health Day and Week, will give visibility to innovative projects in BioMedicine and BioTechnology.
The agenda will include two face-to-face sessions (Monday 8 and Tuesday 9 April) and two virtual sessions (10 and 11). This format makes it easier for speakers who cannot travel to Granada to share their progress and messages with the entire community, which raises the academic level of this event to the highest level.
All BM&TTalks presentations can be followed through ‘The Observatory‘, the digital platform of Medina Media Events, where all interventions will be available 24/365 for on-demand consumption, like Netflix, but free of charge.