When Diego Carrasco first saw Lisbon from the air fifteen years ago, the city looked like a watercolour: terracotta rooftops glowing above the Tagus River. “I remember seeing the roofs from the plane,” he says. “It was so romantic. I thought this city is so old, and at the same time, so new.”
It was 2010, and Carrasco, a young Colombian doctor, had been selected to come to Portugal through a government programme that invited Latin American doctors to work in Europe. “I felt welcome from the very beginning, as it was the government itself that had opened the door.”

When we decided to discuss the “welcoming internationals” theme, Mert Erginkaya was among the first names that came to mind. Mert has been a close friend for over six years, and I’ve always felt he represents the Champalimaud Foundation (CF) community at its best. This piece is his story and, in a way, a bit of mine, because I was lucky enough to be part of Mert’s CF journey.

It was Friday evening, November 7th, and the entrance hall of the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown didn’t look like itself. Where one would normally expect calm and quiet, the space pulsed with energy, the clinking of pots, the low hum of conversation, the scent of coriander, roasted pumpkin, and the promise of so much more.

Host

Adriana Sánchez Danés, PhD, Cancer and Stem Cell Biology Lab

Venue

Seminar room

We explore how imagination can heal – like playing Tetris after trauma to weaken intrusive images in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) – and how it can misfire in the hallucinations of Parkinson’s disease or bereavement, when a “phantom spouse” may still be seen or felt, or in Functional Neurological Disorder, where expectations and emotions can produce real physical symptoms, even paralysis. Zeman shares the unforgettable case of “Toby” to show the power of suggestion at work.