Education

• BS, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile
• PhD in Molecular and Cellular Physiology, University of Chicago

Research

• aging
• Alzheimer’s disease
• exercise
• brain aging
• synaptic plasticity
• skeletal muscle
• metabolism
• autophagy
• proteostasis

Overview

Our work straddles the fields of neuroscience and metabolism, as we work towards understanding how exercise is good for the brain. The Cortes Lab is interested in understanding how our brain ages, and in particular, how it ages as an integrated part of a physiological system. We take a cutting edge approach to understanding brain plasticity and brain aging, examining how distant tissues such as skeletal muscle may be fundamentally influencing the rate at which our brain ages. Importantly, as these conversations may be disrupted in age-associated neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, we aim to uncover and develop novel diagnostics and therapeutics for these disorders.