Francisco Aboitiz is director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Neuroscience and professor of psychiatry at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. His research lines include the evolution of the brain and cognition and the neurocognitive underpinnings of neuropsychiatric conditions such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism, multiple sclerosis and epilepsy. He is currently working on social projects, including implementing robotics workshops for children in schools of social risk and assessing their cognitive improvements, and screening resilience signatures in adolescent mothers. He has authored more than 140 scientific articles and is author of the books “A Brain for Speech. A View From Evolutionary Neuroanatomy” and “A History of Bodies, Brains and Minds. The Evolution of Life and Consciousness.”

Francisco Aboitiz
Director
Interdisciplinary Center for Neuroscience
From this contributor
Selected articles
- “A multimodal interface for speech perception: the role of the left superior temporal sulcus in social cognition and autism” | Cerebral Cortex
- “Neural responses to sensory novelty with and without conscious access” | Neuroimage
- “The Enigmatic Reissner's Fiber and the Origin of Chordates ” | Frontiers in Neuroanatomy
- “Neurocognitive mechanisms underlying working memory encoding and retrieval in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder” | Scientific Reports
- “Origin and evolution of human speech: Emergence from a trimodal auditory, visual and vocal network” | Progress in Brain Research
- “Morphological evolution of the vertebrate forebrain: From mechanical to cellular processes” | Evolution & Development
Explore more from The Transmitter
This paper changed my Life: Bill Newsome reflects on a quadrilogy of classic visual perception studies
The 1970s papers from Goldberg and Wurtz made ambitious mechanistic studies of higher brain functions seem feasible.

This paper changed my Life: Bill Newsome reflects on a quadrilogy of classic visual perception studies
The 1970s papers from Goldberg and Wurtz made ambitious mechanistic studies of higher brain functions seem feasible.
Science must step away from nationally managed infrastructure
Scientific data and independence are at risk. We need to work with community-driven services and university libraries to create new multi-country organizations that are resilient to political interference.

Science must step away from nationally managed infrastructure
Scientific data and independence are at risk. We need to work with community-driven services and university libraries to create new multi-country organizations that are resilient to political interference.
Familiar autism-linked genes emerge from first analysis of Latin American cohort
The findings, detailed in a January preprint, suggest autism’s fundamental biology is the same regardless of ancestry. But questions remain.

Familiar autism-linked genes emerge from first analysis of Latin American cohort
The findings, detailed in a January preprint, suggest autism’s fundamental biology is the same regardless of ancestry. But questions remain.