About

Ana María Álvarez is a tenured Associate Professor at UC San Diego's Theatre and Dance Department. She is a prolific choreographer, skilled dancer, masterful teaching artist, and movement activist recognized for her dynamic works. Her thesis work explored the abstraction of Latine dance, specifically Salsa, as a means to express social resistance related to the U.S. immigration battle. This work led to the founding of CONTRA-TIEMPO Activist Dance Theater in 2005 in Los Angeles. Her recent work with CONTRA-TIEMPO includes the commissioned piece azúcar!, which will be developed further at Jacob's Pillow and shared as part of UCSD's Art & Power season in Spring 2024. Alvarez and CONTRA-TIEMPO have toured internationally, presenting works such as joyUS|justUS, a celebration of humanity and femininity centered on joy, which has been performed across the U.S. and in countries including Germany, Bulgaria, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, and El Salvador. She was selected as the 2018 BiNational Artist in Residence, connecting communities along the U.S.-Mexico border through workshops, performances, and public talks. Alvarez has also represented American Contemporary Dance abroad through the U.S. Department of State's cultural exchange program, DanceMotionUSA. Her academic background includes a B.A. in Dance and Politics from Oberlin College and an M.F.A. in Choreography from UCLA's Department of World Arts and Cultures. Recognized with numerous awards and grants, she has been honored with the Mujeres Destacadas award from LA Opinion and a Los Angeles Women's Theatre Festival Rainbow Award for her work with CONTRA-TIEMPO. Her future projects include works exploring themes of social justice and activism through dance and musical theater.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Audiology
• Neuroscience
• Medicine
• Humanities

Selected publications

• T219. Effects of Tolcapone on Sensorimotor Gating in Healthy Adults

  Biological Psychiatry · 2018-04-09

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  PublisherDOI

• Tolcapone-Enhanced Neurocognition in Healthy Adults: Neural Basis and Predictors

  The International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2017-08-10 · 26 citations

  articleOpen access

  Background: Failure of procognitive drug trials in schizophrenia may reflect the clinical heterogeneity of schizophrenia, underscoring the need to identify biomarkers of treatment sensitivity. We used an experimental medicine design to test the procognitive effects of a putative procognitive agent, tolcapone, using an electroencephalogram-based cognitive control task in healthy subjects. Methods: Healthy men and women (n=27; ages 18-35 years), homozygous for either the Met/Met or Val/Val rs4680 genotype, received placebo and tolcapone 200 mg orally across 2 test days separated by 1 week in a double-blind, randomized, counterbalanced, within-subject design. On each test day, neurocognitive performance was assessed using the MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery and an electroencephalogram-based 5 Choice-Continuous Performance Test. Results: Tolcapone enhanced visual learning in low-baseline MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery performers (d=0.35) and had an opposite effect in high performers (d=0.5), and enhanced verbal fluency across all subjects (P=.03) but had no effect on overall MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery performance. Tolcapone reduced false alarm rate (d=0.8) and enhanced frontal P200 amplitude during correctly identified nontarget trials (d=0.6) in low-baseline 5 Choice-Continuous Performance Test performers and had opposite effects in high performers (d=0.5 and d=0.25, respectively). Tolcapone's effect on frontal P200 amplitude and false alarm rate was correlated (rs=-0.4, P=.05). All neurocognitive effects of tolcapone were independent of rs4680 genotype. Conclusion: Tolcapone enhanced neurocognition and engaged electroencephalogram measures relevant to cognitive processes in specific subgroups of healthy individuals. These findings support an experimental medicine model for identifying procognitive treatments and provide a strong basis for future biomarker-informed procognitive studies in schizophrenia patients.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• 777. Neural Targets of Tolcapone Enhanced Reverse-Translated 5-Choice Continuous Performance Test (5C-CPT) Performance in COMT-Genotyped Healthy Adults

  Biological Psychiatry · 2017-04-29

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  PublisherDOI

• Gamificación y entrenamiento cognitivo en personas mayores: una aproximación basada en "crowdsourcing"

  Dialnet (Universidad de la Rioja) · 2016-01-01

  articleSenior author

  El deterioro cognitivo es una seria preocupacion para las sociedades mas avanzadas. La investigaciones actuales se centran especialmente en un enfoque preventivo, cuyo objetivo es retrasar lo mas posible la aparicion de los primeros sintomas. Las estrategias terapeuticas actuales se basan en completar de manera regular diversas tareas de manera monotona, convirtiendose en una rutina para los individuos, lo que suele conllevar a su abandono en un corto periodo de tiempo. La gamificacion surge como una tecnica eficaz en el ambito del cuidado de la salud y el bienestar, mediante la utilizacion de los elementos propios de diseno de juegos con una finalidad motivacional. Este trabajo presenta Preventive Neuro Health (PNH), una herramienta disenada con un enfoque crowdsourcing para la prevencion del deterioro cognitivo de los personas de edad avanzada y que implementa elementos que habilitan una personalizacion tanto desde las perspectiva terapeutica como motivacional

  Publisher

• Gamification of cognitive training

  2016-09-13 · 24 citations

  articleSenior author

  Cognitive impairment is a serious concern for the most advanced societies in the world. Current research focuses on prevention strategies, which aim to delay as much as possible the first symptoms from appearing. Common therapeutic strategies rely on participants regularly completing diverse tasks in a monotonous way, which may get tiresome as they become routine, tempting participants to drop out after a short time. According to the motivational outcomes of the strategic use of game design elements, gamification arises as an effective technique for user engagement in non-leisure contexts like healthcare and well-being. Therefore, in this work we present Preventive Neuro Health (PNH), a gamified crowdsourcing-inspired tool for cognitive impairment prevention of older adults that enables personalization both from clinical and engagement perspectives.

  PublisherDOI

• Amphetamine Enhances Gains in Auditory Discrimination Training in Adult Schizophrenia Patients

  Schizophrenia Bulletin · 2016-10-11 · 30 citations

  articleOpen access

  Targeted cognitive training (TCT) of auditory processing enhances higher-order cognition in schizophrenia patients. TCT performance gains can be detected after 1 training session. As a prelude to a potential clinical trial, we assessed a pharmacological augmentation of cognitive therapy (PACT) strategy by testing if the psychostimulant, amphetamine, augments TCT gains in auditory processing speed (APS) in schizophrenia patients and healthy subjects (HS). HS and schizophrenia patients were tested in a screening session (test 1), followed by a double-blind crossover design (tests 2-3), comparing placebo vs amphetamine (10 mg; 7 d between tests). On each test day, 1 hour of Posit Science "Sound Sweeps" training was bracketed by 2- to 4-minute pre- and post-training assessments of APS. Training consisted of a speeded auditory time-order judgment task of successive frequency modulation sweeps. Auditory system "learning" (APS post- vs pre-training) was enhanced by amphetamine (main effect of drug: P < .002; patients: d = 0.56, P < .02; HS: d = 0.39, nonsignificant), and this learning was sustained for at least 1 week. Exploratory analyses assessed potential biomarker predictors of sensitivity to these effects of amphetamine. Amphetamine enhances auditory discrimination learning in schizophrenia patients. We do not know whether gains in APS observed in patients after 1 hour of TCT predict clinical benefits after a full course of TCT. If amphetamine can enhance the therapeutic effects of TCT, this would provide strong support for a "PACT" treatment paradigm for schizophrenia.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• P17-1 Structural brain changes in psychopath and violent criminals

  Clinical Neurophysiology · 2010-10-01

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  PublisherDOI

• 155. Brain volumes asymmetries between homologous regions of both hemispheres

  Clinical Neurophysiology · 2008-07-27

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Biochemical Basis for the Differential Effects of Deoxycoformycin on Human Leukemias

  Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 1984-01-01 · 3 citations

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  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Gregory A. Light

  Mental Illness Research, Education and Clinical Centers

  9 shared

• Jo Talledo

  University of California, San Diego

  7 shared

• Savita G. Bhakta

  University of California, San Diego

  7 shared

• Neal R. Swerdlow

  University of California, San Diego

  7 shared

• Brinda K. Rana

  University of California, San Diego

  7 shared

• Erica Hughes

  Cleveland State University

  6 shared

• Bryan Balvaneda

  VA San Diego Healthcare System

  5 shared

• Jared W. Young

  5 shared

Awards & honors

• 2020 Doris Duke Artist
• inaugural Dance /USA Artist Fellow
• 2018 BiNational Artist in Residence
• NEFA's National Dance Project
• National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures