On Neurons, Stories and Magic Tricks

The invited speaker to this special trasndisciplinary lecture, Maria Galarreta is a neuroscientist, a physician, a filmmaker and a mindfulness teacher. After almost 20 years studying the brain, Mario joined Google in 2009, where he worked as a video production manager and led Search Inside Yourself (a mindfulness-based emotional intelligence program). Before Google, Mario was a Senior Research Scientist at Stanford University School of Medicine where he studied the physiology of cortical inhibitory circuits and discovered the existence of gap junctions (electrical synapses) between GABAergic interneurons. Previously, he did a post-doc in Shaul Hestrin’s lab at the University of Tennessee, Memphis. Mario was born in Logroño (Spain) and holds an MD (Neurology), a PhD (Ramón y Cajal Hospital, Madrid) and an MFA in Cinema (San Francisco State University). He lives in San Francisco (California) since 2000.

In this lecture, Mario guided the attendants through his trans-disciplinary professional journey, showing us that disciplines that may seem very far from each other, can be more connected than what one can imagine at a first glance.