Welcome to Open Journal of Depression and Anxiety

Mr. Casandra Isabel Montoro Aguilar

Affiliation :
University of Balearic Islands, Spain,Spain

Biography :
Dr. Montoro is a highly motivated and hardworking person, whose scientific career started in 2011 when proposed a Masters study in the area of personality factors in fibromialgia (FM) under the tutoring and supervising of Dr. Reyes del Paso (a Spanish leader in chronic pain and cardiovascular Psychophysiology), who later became her Ph.D. director. During the course of the same, she conducted functional transcranial Doppler sonography (fTCD) recordings in psychological experiments, and demonstrated an unquestionable proficiency in the application of this technique. This aptitude further resulted in a collaborations proposal in Dr. Reyes del Pasos ongoing projects. After graduating with honours, she decided to perform a doctorals project under the supervision of Dr. Reyes del Paso. This project lasted four years along which she was introduced into the chronic pain and cardiovascular Psychophysiology fields. The overall doctoral training received endowed her with an excellent physiological and psychological background knowledge and excellent understanding of experimental designs and statistical data analysis. Furthermore, during her pre-doctoral training, she received several awards for her scientific communications, as well as a scholarship awarded by the doctoral school of the University of Jaen with the aim of conducting a international Research stay and thus obtain the Doctor International Mention. For this purpose, she contacted with Dr. Clauw (director of Chronic Pain & Fatigue Research Center [CPFRC] at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan), a worldwide leader in the chronic pain field. This first contact leads to an excellent relationship, and in a research stay at the University of Michigan which lasted 3 months during which she got involved in the CPFRC environment. Lastly, the productivity ofher dissertation work was reflected in nine articles, six of them published by that time, which stemmed in an extensive dissertation, surpassing all expectations. Thereafter, and during her postdoctoral experience, she was introduced in a new research project of Dr. Reyes del Paso (as well as in teaching) and awarded with an Ernst Mach Grant (November 2016-July 2017), a public competitive scholarship granted by the Austrian Academic Exchange Service (OeAD) and financed by the Federal Ministry of Science, Research and Economy (BMWFW), to develop a postdoctoral research project under Dr. Duscheks supervision (one of Europes leading experts in the field of cardiovascular psychophysiology, and one of the pioneers of the application of fTCD to psychology) at University for Health Sciences Medical Informatics and Technology (UMIT), Hall in Tirol, Austria. During the project, she was engaged in the recording and analysis of ultrasonic and behavioural data in hypotension and depression participants, the preparation of publication manuscripts, and further trained other group members in the use of fTCD. Finally but not least, she has collaborated with the International University of Valencia as a lecturer, coordinator, evaluator and supervisor of several masters thesis. Currently, she is enjoying the competitive grant “Juan de la Cierva-trainning”. Under this scholarship, she is teaching in the psychology degree and collaborating in a new research project of Dr. Montoya (a Spanish leader in Neuroscience and pain) focused on the changes in brain electrical activity and pain perception induced by Transcranial Electrical Stimulation.

Research Interest :
Chronic pain; fibromyalgia; cognitive deficits; personality; electric transcranial stimulation; Functional transcranial Doppler ultrasonography; cerebral blood flow variability; cardiovascular psychophysiology; electrical cerebral activity and pain perception.