Dr Juan Carlos Mendez Nunez

About me:

Juan Carlos joined the University of Exeter as a Lecturer in Neuroscience in 2022.

Previously, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford. He first joined Prof Andrew Parker’s group, where he studied how the brain’s visual cortices compare the input from both eyes to calculate a scene’s depth. He then moved to Prof Anna Mitchell’s group, where he combined neuroimaging and electrophysiological techniques to understand how information is held in selective neurons while a cognitive task is being performed. As part of this team, Juan Carlos also advocated for increasing researchers’ involvement in public science awareness, collaborating in pioneering science engagement events.

Throughout his career, Juan Carlos has collaborated with different research groups using a wide variety of neuroscientific tools. With Prof John Rothwell, at UCL, he studied time perception using transcranial magnetic stimulation. He also spent a year at Prof Robert Desimone’s lab, at MIT, where he used optogenetics to manipulate neural activity during attentional tasks. Finally, during his PhD, under the direction of Prof Hugo Merchant at UNAM, he used neurophysiological techniques to find the neural correlates for the estimation, comparison, and categorisation of temporal and spatial information.

Interests:

Juan Carlos is interested in studying the neural circuits responsible for the imagery of temporal information, as well as the specific frequencies that are used to channel this information between the nodes of these circuits.

Qualifications:

• PhD in Biomedical Sciences (Neuroscience)
• BSc Medicine