He leads the Consciousness Group at BCBL - Basque Center on Cognition Brain and Language.
Keywords: (Un)conscious information processing, metacognition, subjective experience, decoded neurofeedback, brain imaging, psychophysics.
David received his PhD in Experimental Psychology (2004) from the University of Santiago de Compostela. He then moved to the UK to join the Behavioural Brain Sciences Center at the University of Birmingham, where he was awarded a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship by the British Academy for the Humanities. In 2008, he established his own lab at the Division of Brain Sciences, Imperial College London, where he served as Assistant and later Associate Professor until 2016. During this period, he received the Medical Research Council's New Investigator Award and held visiting scholar positions at Harvard Medical School and the Neuroimaging Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. In 2016, David returned to Spain to launch a new lab at the BCBL. His current research focuses on the distinction between conscious and non-conscious processes involved in perceptual selection, learning and memory, language, and metacognition. His team uses a broad range of behavioral, neuroimaging, and computational methods in both typical and atypical populations. The ultimate goal is to develop new protocols—for example, involving decoded neurofeedback—to manipulate underlying brain mechanisms and drive meaningful changes in cognition, behavior, and subjective experience.
Research group: Consciousness
Program: MSCA Doctoral network 2022, MSCA-2022-DN_101119647
Funding agency: European Commission
09/2024- 08/2027
Funding: 251.971 €
PI: David Soto
PhD Student: Francisca Campos Matias
Program: Plan Nacional 2023, PID2023-149267NB-I00
Funding agency: Spanish Ministry
09/2024- 08/2028
Funding: 170.125 €
PI: David Soto
Team member: Najemeddine Abdennour, Yining (Ivory) Cheng
Program: Plan Nacional 2019, PID2019-105494GB-I00
Funding agency: Spanish Ministry
06/2020- 05/2024
Funding: 128.000 €
Pi: David Soto
Program: PIBA 2017, PI_2017_1_0025
Funding agency: Basque Government
09/2017- 09/2019
Funding: 69.600 €
PI: David Soto
Program: Plan Nacional 2016, PSI2016-76443-P
Funding agency: Spanish Ministry
12/2016- 12/2019
Funding: 48.000 €
PI: David Soto
Program: SEV-2015-0490
Funding agency: Spanish Ministry
01/2016- 01/2019
Funding: 4.000.000 €
PI: Prof. Manuel Carreiras
Guarantors: Arthur Samuel, David Soto, Clara D. Martin, Nicola Molinaro, Mari Cruz Rodriguez-Oroz, Marie Lallier, Kepa Paz-Alonso, Doug Davidson, Simona Mancini & Loretxu Bergouignan