Marina Lopez-Sola's work focuses on understanding the brain mechanisms and psychological processes that underlie somatic complaints and affective distress and recovery in chronic pain, depression and anxiety. Her research is mostly focused on the analysis and interpretation of functional brain imaging data, subjective measures of pain, emotion and thought content and psychophysiological and behavioral measures. She is currently working on identifying neural signatures of chronic pain conditions that are applicable to juvenile forms of chronic pain and can distinguish primary pain pathologies from primary depression and anxiety. She is also working on understanding the effects of social support and altruistic behavior as significant analgesic tools. On a similar line, she studies the brain mechanisms predicting positive response to mindfulness based cognitive therapy and somatosensory-based interventions in the context of pain and depression.