About me
I am a psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist currently working as an assistant professor at the Department of Cognition, Development and Educational Psychology of the University of Barcelona.
After I graduated in Psychology at my alma mater Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Tarragona, Spain) in 2014, I completed a MSc in Research in Behaviour and Cognition at Universitat de Barcelona, where I obtained my PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience in 2021 under the supervision of Dr. Antoni Rodríguez-Fornells and Dr. Joaquín Morís. During my PhD, I did an internship at the Donders Institute for Brain, Behaviour & Cognition (The Netherlands) under the mentoring of Dr. Vitoria Piai. As a postdoctoral researcher, I joined the Biological Psychology Lab at Otto-von-Guericke-Universität-Magdeburg (Germany) with a position funded by the Spanish Margarita Salas program. Later, I worked as a lecturer at the Department of Psychology of Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (2023-2025).
My research focus is on brain mechanisms involved in language comprehension and language learning both in clinical and non-clinical populations. Specifically, I employ neuroimaging techniques (mainly EEG and fMRI) to study anticipatory processes that facilitate sentence comprehension and boost the acquisition of new words and new concepts. I develop my research primarily at the Cognition and Brain Plasticity Unit and actively collaborate with Dr. Mikael Roll (University of Lund, Sweden) and Dr. Marcin Naranowicz (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland).
I am passionate about teaching and communicating; transferring knowledge (and thinking of innovative ways to do so) is one of the most fulfilling activities that I know of. My free time is filled with family, friends, music, and nature (especially birds!).
Publications
2026
León-Cabrera, P., Prunell-Castañé, A., Münte, T. F., Wang, S., & Rodríguez-Fornells, A. (2026). Ultraslow brain dynamics as neurophysiological markers of information sampling during learning. iScience, 29(9).
Cepero-Escribano, V., León-Cabrera. P., Gasa-Roqué, A., Otazu, X., Fernández-Coello, A., Naval-Baudin, P., Camins, A. Rico, I., Gabarros, A., Rodriguez-Fornells, A. & Cerda-Company, X. (2026). Inside a programmer’s brain: dissociating code and language comprehension networks using a novel fMRI-ESM protocol. In press.
2024
León-Cabrera, P., Hjortdal, A., Berthelsen, S. G., Rodriguez-Fornells, A., & Roll, M. (2024). Neurophysiological signatures of prediction in language: A critical review of anticipatory negativities. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews , 160, 105624. Open Access
Cepero-Escribano, V., Cerda-Company, X., León-Cabrera, P., Olive, G., Cucurell, D., Gasa-Roqué, A., Gabarrós, A., Naval-Baudin, P., Camins, A., Rico, I., Fernández-Coello, A., Sierpowska, J. & Rodriguez-Fornells, A. (2024). Can the knight capture the queen? The role of supramarginal gyrus in chess rule-retrieval as evidenced by a novel combined awake brain mapping and fMRI protocol. Cortex, 178, 235-244. Open Access
2022
León-Cabrera, P., Guillamon, A., Vega, D. C., & Rodriguez-Fornells, A. (2022). The beauty of language structure: a single-case fMRI study of palindrome creation. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 63, 101086. URL | Preprint
León-Cabrera, P., Piai, V., Morís, J., & Rodríguez-Fornells, A. (2022) Alpha power decreases associated with prediction in written and spoken sentence comprehension. Neuropsychologia. In press. Open Access
2021
León-Cabrera, P., Pagonabarraga, J., Morís, J., Martínez-Horta, S., Marín-Lahoz, J., Horta-Barba, A., Bejr-Kasem, H., Kulisevsky, J., & Rodríguez-Fornells, A. (2021). Neural signatures of predictive language processing in Parkinson’s disease with and without mild cognitive impairment. Cortex. 141, 112-127. Open Access
Rodriguez-Fornells, A., León-Cabrera, P., Gabarros, A., & Sierpowska, J. (2021). Inner Speech Brain Mapping. Is It Possible to Map What We Cannot Observe?. In Intraoperative Mapping of Cognitive Networks (pp. 381-409). Springer, Cham.
2020
Sierpowska, J., León-Cabrera, P., Camins, A., Juncadella, M., Gabarrós, A., & Rodríguez-Fornells, A. (2020). The black box of global aphasia: Neuroanatomical underpinnings of remission from acute global aphasia with preserved inner language function. Cortex, 130, 340-350. Open Access
2019
León-Cabrera, P., Flores, A., Rodríguez-Fornells, A., & Morís, J. (2019). Ahead of time: early sentence slow cortical modulations associated to semantic prediction. NeuroImage, 189, 192-201. URL
2018
Gurtubay-Antolin, A., León-Cabrera, P., & Rodríguez-Fornells, A. (2018). Neural Evidence of Hierarchical Cognitive Control during Haptic Processing: An fMRI Study. Eneuro, 5(6). Open Access.
2017
León-Cabrera, P., Rodríguez-Fornells, A., & Morís, J. (2017). Electrophysiological correlates of semantic anticipation during speech comprehension. Neuropsychologia, 99, 326-334. URL
Under review
Currently no papers under review
Contact me
Cognition and Brain Plasticity Unit
C/Feixa Llarga, S/N
08907 L'Hospitalet de Llobregat
Barcelona (Spain)