CNC-UC/CiBB researcher Diogo Reis Carneiro is one of the winners of the Maria de Sousa 2025 Award, presented by the Portuguese Medical Association and the Bial Foundation. With the project funded by the award, Diogo Reis Carneiro aims to make new contributions to understanding cardiovascular interoception in Parkinson's disease.

Interoception is the physiological and psychological representation of the body's internal states, including the perception of the functioning of its organs, such as the beating of the heart or the filling of the bladder. Diogo Reis Carneiro's research, focused on interoception in that disease, is now funded through the CaInPark project - Cardiovascular interoception: from neuroanatomical foundations to disruption in Parkinson's disease.

“Cardiovascular interoception may be a promising physiological and neural marker of body-brain interaction, so in this project we aim to deepen our understanding of cardiovascular interoception, characterizing its neurofunctional basis in healthy individuals and investigating its changes in individuals with Parkinson's disease, aspects that remain poorly understood,” explains Diogo Reis Carneiro.

Regarding the impact of this research, the researcher explains that "on the one hand, we aim to broaden our knowledge of interoceptive dysfunction in Parkinson's disease and relate it to autonomic dysfunction, but we also foresee the possibility of laying the foundations for knowledge so that, in the future, interoceptive modulation treatments (which help to better understand bodily sensations) can be used, with scientific backing, in a population for which there are still many therapeutic gaps."

The CaInPark project will be funded with €25,000, and part of the research will be carried out at the Medical University of Innsbruck in Austria.

In addition to being a researcher at CNC-UC/CiBB, Diogo Reis Carneiro is a researcher at the Institute of Nuclear Sciences Applied to Health (ICNAS), a neurologist, a doctoral student, and a guest assistant at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Coimbra (FMUC).

Among the winners is Neuza Domingues, a researcher at the Multidisciplinary Institute of Aging (MIA Portugal) and CiBB, who will lead the project Nuclear lysosomes: unraveling the communication between lysosomes and the nucleus.

The Maria de Sousa Award, named in honor of physician and researcher Maria de Sousa, is promoted by the Portuguese Medical Association and the Bial Foundation and aims to reward young Portuguese researchers, up to 35 years of age, by supporting research projects in the field of health sciences, which includes an internship at an international center of excellence.

The ceremony to announce the winners of the 5th edition of the Maria de Sousa Award will take place in Lisbon on the afternoon of November 4. More information about the Maria de Sousa Award is available at www.fundacaobial.com/premios/premio-maria-de-sousa.

Catarina Ribeiro (UC)