José Valenzuela

Arsoundscapes team collaborator José Valenzuela

Keywords: psychoacoustics; neuroscience; emotions; engineering.

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José Valenzuela is an Electronic and Automatics engineer.

He has a Master’s in Biomedical Engineering, an MBA, and a Master’s in Literary Creation. He received his PhD degree from the University Pompeu Fabra in 2016, under the supervision of Dr. Domingo Ródenas.

He has worked as a lab engineer at the Nanomaterial and Microsystems Group (UAB), at the Cognitive Neuroscience Research Group (Brainlab, UB), as well as at the Virtual Reality and Neuroscience Group (Event Lab, UB).

He has also worked as an Innovation Project Manager at Vall d’Hebron University Hospital, and as a Creative Producer at Visyon.

He currently writes for several cultural media, such as Jot Down Magazine, CCCB Lab, and Revista LEER.

During his PhD studies in Humanities, he investigated cognitive mechanisms that prompt an emotional response in readers during their transportation to narrative universes. Based on aesthetics reception theories, possible worlds theory and emotions science, he undertook a theoretical study about mechanisms that regulate disbelief suspension during the fictional transportation process.

His research interests focus on the intersection between Humanities and Science, particularly on topics such as perception, imagination, and the way we create and perceive fictional worlds in literature, virtual environments, cinema, mental diseases, and even in interpreting the real world.

RELEVANT PUBLICATIONS

Slater, M., Navarro, X., Valenzuela, J., Oliva, R., Beacco, A., Thorn, J., Watson, Z. (2018). Virtually Being Lenin Enhances Presence and Engagement in a Scene from the Russian Revolution. Frontiers in Robotics and AI. 

Ródenas de Moya, D., Valenzuela, J. (2016). Don Quixote’s Response to Fiction in Maese Pedro’s Puppet Show: Madman or Transported Reader?. In I. Jaén & J. Simon (Eds.), Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.