Joan Orpella, Ph.D.

Joan Orpella is a former professional violinist who transitioned to psychology and cognitive neuroscience. He earned his PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience in 2019 from the University of Barcelona, where he worked with Dr. Ruth de Diego-Balaguer on the neurocomputational bases of language statistical learning. Joan continued this work as a postdoctoral researcher in David Poeppel’s lab at NYU Psychology where, in collaboration with Dr. Assaneo (UNAM) and Dr. Ripollés (NYU), he developed a short behavioral test to measure neural auditory-motor synchronization and connectivity. His most recent research involves using internal speech decoding to uncover the neural events and representations involved in speech planning and production. Joan is also interested in speech disorders, particularly stuttering, and has collaborated with Dr. Jackson since 2019. Among other contributions, this collaboration has led to the most extensive investigation on stuttered (vs. fluent) speech to date. Throughout his career, Joan has worked with various methods and techniques including behavioral assessment, computational modeling, rTMS, fMRI, MEG, and DTI.