Hi! I am a member of Michael Anderson’s Memory Control group. I earned my PhD in 2013 at the University Pablo de Olavide, Seville, Spain, under the supervision of Mercedes Atienza and Jose Luis Cantero. I did my first postdoc at the University of Konstanz, where I was part of Sarang Dalal’s group and the Zukunftskolleg as Marie Curie fellow. I moved to Cambridge and joined the CBU in November 2017, after being awarded a Newton International Fellowship by the Royal Society. Since 2021, I hold a position as Research Associate.

Overall, my research has been dedicated to investigating how neural oscillations mediate different memory processes in humans. I have mostly worked with non-invasive electrophysiological techniques such as EEG and MEG. However, while in Konstanz, I had the opportunity to perform and analyse intracranial EEG (iEEG) recordings -and a simultaneous iEEG-MEG recording- in patients with epilepsy that were engaged in virtual navigation. I have extensively used time-frequency analyses to determine changes in regional brain activation, as well as different methods to investigate long-distance communication between brain regions. I am also well-experienced in applying beamformers to infer the sources of oscillatory activity. More recently, I analysed a multimodal dataset (simultaneous EEG/fMRI recordings). By combining fMRI with EEG measures as parametric modulators, we gained insight into the role of the anterior cingulate cortex in the control of intrusive thoughts.

Publications

• Crespo-García M, Wang Y, Jiang M, Anderson MC, Lei X. (2022) Anterior Cingulate Cortex Signals the Need to Control Intrusive Thoughts during Motivated Forgetting. J Neurosci. 42(21):4342-4359.
• Ruzich E, Crespo-García M, Dalal SS, Schneiderman JF. (2019) Characterizing hippocampal dynamics with MEG: A systematic review and evidence-based guidelines. Hum Brain Mapp. 40(4):1353-1375.
• Clausner T, Dalal SS, Crespo-García M. (2017) Photogrammetry-Based Head Digitization for Rapid and Accurate Localization of EEG Electrodes and MEG Fiducial Markers Using a Single Digital SLR Camera. Front Neurosci. 11:264.
• Crespo-García M, Zeiller M, Leupold C, Kreiselmeyer G, Rampp S, Hamer HM, Dalal SS. (2016) Slow-theta power decreases during item-place encoding predict spatial accuracy of subsequent context recall. Neuroimage. 142:533-543. 
• Crespo-García M, Hartmann T. (2014) Does illusory flickering result from rhythmic sampling of visual stimuli? J Neurosci. 34(2):343-5. (Journal Club article)
• Crespo-Garcia M, Pinal D, Cantero JL, Díaz F, Zurrón M, Atienza M. (2013) Working memory processes are mediated by local and long-range synchronization of alpha oscillations. J Cogn Neurosci. 25(8):1343-57.
• Crespo-Garcia M, Cantero JL, Atienza M. (2012) Effects of semantic relatedness on age-related associative memory deficits: the role of theta oscillations. Neuroimage. 61(4):1235-48.
• Gollo LL, Mirasso CR, Atienza M, Crespo-Garcia M, Cantero JL. (2011) Theta band zero-lag long-range cortical synchronization via hippocampal dynamical relaying. PLoS One. 6(3):e17756.
• Atienza M, Crespo-Garcia M, Cantero JL. (2011) Semantic congruence enhances memory of episodic associations: role of theta oscillations. J Cogn Neurosci. 23(1):75-90.
• Crespo-Garcia M, Cantero JL, Pomyalov A, Boccaletti S, Atienza M. (2010) Functional neural networks underlying semantic encoding of associative memories. Neuroimage. 50(3):1258-70.
• Crespo-Garcia M, Atienza M, Cantero JL. (2008) Muscle artifact removal from human sleep EEG by using independent component analysis. Ann Biomed Eng. 36(3):467-75.