Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
Dr. Maria Suñol investigates how brain function and psychosocial traits shape chronic pain and emotional distress in youth. She completed her PhD in Medicine and Translational Research at the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute, where she identified early brain patterns associated with increased risk of obsessive-compulsive disorder in healthy children. Her findings suggested that early signs of mental health risk can be detected in the brain before clinical symptoms appear. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Pain and Emotion Neuroscience Laboratory (PENLab) at the University of Barcelona, led by Prof. Marina López-Solà. There, she combines brain imaging, psychological assessments, and machine learning to study why adolescents facing similar challenges have very different emotional experiences and mental health trajectories. She has conducted research at Harvard University (USA) and the University of Melbourne (Australia), integrating genetic, computational, and social psychology perspectives into her work. Dr. Suñol currently leads projects focused on empathy, self-compassion, and social support as protective mechanisms in mental health. Her long-term goal is to build a research program that identifies the biological and psychosocial mechanisms that foster resilience, compassion, and positive social development during adolescence. Ultimately, she aims to translate scientific discoveries into low-cost, accessible tools that help clinicians and schools detect early signs of vulnerability, personalize support, and promote youth well-being.
Postdoctoral researcher at Pain and Emotion Neuroscience Laboratory (PENlab). University of Barcelona
Co-founder of infovegana.com A website that gathers truthful and updated information about veganism. Accessible to anyone willing to find, in a single place, the truth about animal exploitation and the consequential problems that it involves at ethical, environmental, and health levels.
1-Year Postdoctoral Research Stay and Project Collaboration at the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, Australia. PI: Prof. Brock Bastian “Psychosocial Factors Predicting Perception and Response to Pain in Others”. Aim of the stay: Integrate social psychology perspectives into studying empathy for pain in humans and animals. Develop/validate the first psychological instrument to assess pain inferences and prosocial behavior towards humans and animals. Create simple machine learning models to identify psychosocial factors predicting perceptions and responses to others' pain. Output: I) 1 publication in preparation (1st author); II) 2 invited talks at the Ethics and Wellbeing Hub of the University of Melbourne, Australia (16/04/2024 and 20/09/2023); III) 1 talk at the 2023 Annual Conference of the Society for Australasian Social Psychologists, Noosa, Australia (25/11/2023); IV) 1 poster presentation at the World Congress on Pain 2024 of the International Association for the Study of Pain, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (09/07/2024); V) 1 poster presentation at the EFIC 2025; VI) talk at PHAIR 2025
My research focuses on the psychosocial mechanisms that normalize the human consumption of certain animals from an antispeciesist and intersectional perspective. I have presented my findings at multiple national congresses in oral communication format.
My thesis focused on the neurobiological bases of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. I also collaborate in other psychiatry and neuroimaging projects. I have presented my findings at multiple international congresses in both poster and oral communication format. 1st decile peer-reviewed publications: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29301668 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30907337 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31431608 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32144139 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32950652/ Skills: - Acquisition, Preprocessing and Analysis of Neuroimaging data - Database Management - Statistical Data Analysis using MATLAB, R, SPM12, SPSS and AMOS. - Scientific Writing and Communication - Team Work - Technology Skills (spreadsheets, databases, word processing, graphic presentation, e-mail writing)
"Brain Structural Correlates of Subclinical Obsessive-Compulsive Symptoms in Healthy Children"
"Interactions between Genetic Risk Scores, Regional Gray Matter Volumes and Clinical Symptoms in patients with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder"