Luísa Lopes Lab

Neurobiology of Ageing & Disease

Ageing, stress and neurodegenerative diseases are among the conditions that contribute to the accelerated loss of cognitive function. Our group’s work is focused on understanding the mechanisms inducing this “early-ageing”, which render the hippocampus – the brain area related to learning and memory – particularly susceptible.

We focus on characterizing the molecular mechanisms associated to hippocampal loss of function and its outcome in behavior performance and synaptic function, using rodent models. We ensure the translation to the human brain, by testing these molecular imprints in healthy and diseased human brain tissue. We are currently focused into exploring the role of adenosine A2A receptors as potential cognitive modulators both in vitro and in vivo.