From my doctoral thesis (1997) in the laboratory of Professor Washington Buño at the Cajal Institute (CSIC), through the Ramon y Cajal contract (RYC2007), to the present moment (Profesor Titular en la UAM, 2024), my scientific achievements have been related to the understanding of the cellular and circuit mechanisms involved in the induction of synaptic plasticity and plasticity of neuronal intrinsic properties and how these modulations participate in learning and memory related behaviors. The principal investigator (PI) has performed significant contributions to the knowledge of the regulation of synaptic plasticity by acetylcholine and IGF1 acting on astrocytes that are crucial for the understanding the mechanisms of learning and memory processes in several brain regions like the hippocampus, the barrel cortex and in the medial prefrontal cortex. PI has demonstrated the mechanisms by

which acetylcholine improves learning and memory, being these results published in 14 research articles of the first quartile in the Neuroscience field. Moreover, the last PI research articles have contributed to the understanding of the benefits of IGF-1 in the brain, demonstrating the cellular mechanisms (astrocyte dependent) by which IGF-1 improve associative fear memories. Indeed, in the last 6 years, PI has collaborated with Prof. Ignacio Torres-Alemán (Institute Cajal, CSIC) and with Prof Alfonso Araque (University of Minnesota, USA) to study the influence of IGF-I in the brain activity. His international scientific production has been evidenced with the Alfonso Araque´s collaboration (university of Minnesota, USA), but also with the recent scientific article published in Nature Communications (2023) in collaboration with Pablo Castillo (Albert Einstein College of Medicine USA) and Manuel Guzman (Universidad Complutense de Madrid). The PI presents a continuous line of quality research which has allowed him to publish constantly in high-impact journals. Indeed, he is co-author of 35 indexed scientific publications, most of them (27) belonging to the first quartile (Q1) of the Neuroscience area, being in most of them first or last author. Over the years, he has maintained a coherent line of research with a good temporal regularity, which undoubtedly enables him to lead a research group. The quality of the research carried out is evidenced not only by the impact index of the journals in which the results have been published (i.e: Plos Biology with 12.6 impact factor or PNAS with 9.67impact factor), but also by the number of citations made by other researchers. This research has been possible with regular funding of 10 national research projects, of which he is the PI of the last 5, demonstrating his leadership capacity. Moreover, the Pi capacity for training researchers is supported by the supervision of two PhD students that presented this doctoral thesis (in which the PI is the unique supervisor) in the UAM and the supervision of 13 master thesis, highlighting that the results of most of these works has been published in scientific articles. It is also remarkable the great scientific career of Jose Antonio Noriega, one of the graduated doctors supervised by the PI, that now is postdoctoral research in Alfonso Araque laboratory. It is also noticeable that Irene Berenice, a master student supervised by the IP (now a Juan de la Cierva researcher) has continued collaborating with the IP during her doctoral thesis (supervised by Professor Manuel Guzman), publishing together a Nature communication article (2022). Moreover, the PI has been continuously involved in the evaluation of research activity, participating as an expert evaluator for research projects of the ANEP (2010, 2011,2021,2022), for the Argentinean Research Council (2010, 2011) and for the predoctoral formation contracts of the UAM (2023). The type of research he has done has not allow him to have any type of transfer yet ( Patents, Contracts, technological or transfer merits), but the PI has transfer the knowledge to the society by participating in activities to disseminate his results to the society: (I) participating in the Brain Awareness Week (BAW 2011, Uruguay) and (II) by leading the Health Innovation Journey in the Science for Industry (S4I 2024, Spain), the largest international meeting for connecting the most disruptive research projects developed in universities and research centers with leading companies. All these scientific merits have allowed him to get the permanent position in the UAM (Profesor Titular since 2021) with 3 research merits (sexenios, the last one obtained in 2019), and H index of 17.