Albert Cardona PhD

Albert Cardona keeps an online travelogue of where his research takes him. A quick read reveals not only frequent Atlantic Ocean-hopping from his previous lab in Zurich to collaborate with neuroscientists in the United States, but also his adventurous spirit for conquering the brain's myriad connections.

Cardona began his inquiry by studying the brains of flatworms while a doctoral student at the University of Barcelona. There, he investigated how flatworm planarians build a brain during embryonic development and compared that to how planarians regenerate a brain after a trip to the guillotine. While a student, Cardona made several visits to the lab of Volker Hartenstein, who had described brain development of other flatworms, at University of California, Los Angeles. The lab's main work on the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster's embryonic and larval brains and Hartenstein's enthusiasm for probing what makes brains each tick differently, attracted Cardona.

"We had very interesting discussions about if a planarian regrows a new brain, is it the same individual?" In planarians, Cardona explains, social behavior occurs on very slow timescales. Flies, on the other hand, exhibit dynamic, continuous social behavior, showing preferences for mates and foods, and even fighting when these are limited. That, along with the genetic tractability of fly brain cells, convinced Cardona to switch from flatworms to the fruit fly.