Facundo Manes, MD
Director of the Institute of Neuroscience of the Favaloro Foundation

Versión en español

Graduated from the School of Medicine, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina (as physician) and from the University of Cambridge, England (as Master in Sciences). As a Medicine student he received the 1992 Neurosciences Award, granted by the Argentine Medical Association for his research work entitled The role of the corpus callosum in interhemispheric cerebral transfer. He was anatomy instructor at the Schools of Medicine and of Pharmacy and Biochemistry, University of Buenos Aires.

He carried out his Neurology Residence at the Raúl Carrea Institute for Neurological Research (FLENI) and trained in Functional Neuroimaging in the Department of Neuroradiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School (Boston, USA), completing a fellowship in neuropsychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Iowa (Iowa City, USA), where he was also Neuroanatomy instructor. He worked as neurologist and clinical investigator at the Departments of Neurology and Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, and was consultant in Neurology and in Neuroimaging in the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Medical Research Council, Cambridge, England.

He has published numerous original scientific papers in national journals and in recognised international journals of his speciality such as Brain and Nature Neuroscience. Besides, he has contributed several chapters to international books on Neurology and Psychiatry including the Kaplan & Sadock's Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, published by Williams & Wilkins, Behaviour and Mood Disorders in Focal Brain Lesions, published by Cambridge University Press and Neuropsychology of Emotion, published by Oxford University Press, among others. Dr. Manes has written two books: 1) Convivir con personas con Alzheimer u otras Demencias, 2) Tratado de Neuropsicología.

He has delivered lectures at several international scientific forums as the Royal Society of Medicine (London) and the New York Academy of Sciences. He was consultant in Health and Education of the Dana Foundation in New York. He is consultant in international scientific journals such as Brain, Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, Journal of Neurology, Psychological Medicine, American Journal of Psychiatry, Schizophrenia Research and Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. He is a member of the editorial board of the Neuropsychological Rehabilitation journal.

He has been distinguished with leading national and international awards including the one on Training High-Level Human Resources granted by the Argentine Ministry of Education and the one on The Young Research Worker granted by the American Association of Neuropsychiatry. He is a member of several national and international scientific societies as the Argentine Association of Neuropsychiatry, the American Association of Neurology, the World Federation of Neurology Research Group on Aphasia and Cognitive Disorders and the British Association of Neuropsychology. He is advisory international board member of the International Neuropsychiatric Association.

Among his contributions, Dr. Manes has identified the prefrontal areas related to the decision-making processes; together with Dr. Calder the neural basis of anger, the role of the insula in emotional and cognitive processes. Furthermore, he described for the first time emotion processing in the minimally conscious state, with Dr. Bekinschtein. He developed the first cognitive rehabilitation unit in Latin America using a holistic approach, together with Lic. Sabe. His investigation area comprises the neurobiology of mental processes, particularly on the role of the prefrontal cortex in decision-making, the cognitive reserve in patients in vegetative state and on the neural mechanisms involved in autobiographical memory and in long-term memory consolidation. He was head of the Cognitive Neurology, Neuropsychology and Neuropsychiatry Section at the Raul Carrea Institute for Neurological Research (FLENI). He is currently supervising three PhD students and two postdoctoral students in different projects involving consciousness, autobiographical and semantic memory, executive functions and frontostriatal circuits and decision making-social cognition. He created and currently directs the Institute of Cognitive Neurology (INECO) and the Institute of Neurosciences at Favaloro University both in Buenos Aires, Argentina. These are considered top of the art leading institution of Neuroscience throughout Latin America. He was a professor of Neurophysiology and Cognitive Neurosciences at the Catholic University (UCA) and currently he is a professor of Behavioural Neurology and Cognitive Neuroscience at Favaloro University. He is also official affiliated member of the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Medical Research Council, Cambridge, England. He is the chair of the World Federation of Neurology Research Group on Aphasia and Cognitive Disorders (RGACD).