Cohort 
2020

Adolfo M. García, PhD

Neuroscientist

If we are to reduce the burden of dementia, we must embrace a pluralistic philosophy for research, clinical, and awareness-raising activities.

Current Work

Adolfo is a cognitive neuroscientist who specializes in language and interpersonal communication.

Personal Hero

Allan Holdsworth

Words of Strength

The only truly unachievable goal is the one you do not pursue

Vision

Dementia is a multidetermined phenomenon. Therefore, no single approach will hold the key to its full understanding and management. If we are to reduce the burden of dementia, we must embrace a pluralistic philosophy for research, clinical, and awareness-raising activities.

Strategy

Adolfo’s research combines neurolinguistic experiments, formal language assessments, and natural speech analysis to characterize and discriminate among different neurodegenerative diseases. Verbal skills are variously vulnerable to neurodegeneration and understanding their disturbances can inform diagnostic, prognostic, and monitoring procedures.

Impact

Adolfo’s goal as an Atlantic Fellow is to optimize current language-oriented assessments of neurodegeneration. By identifying automated, affordable, and scalable linguistic markers of neurodegenerative diseases, he aims to promote more equitable clinical opportunities for patients in Latin America and beyond.

Motivation

Neurodegeneration and dementia are escalating across Latin America. Yet, gold-standard diagnostic techniques are often unavailable or unaffordable for most patients. Cutting-edge neurolinguistic assessments can offer sensitive, affordable, non-invasive, and ecological alternatives to discriminate among neurodegenerative diseases and track symptom severity.

Featured Publications