Cognitive Neuroscience

BIOGRAPHY

Currently on Sabbatical at New York University until September 2011.

ACADEMIC POSITION:
Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, Institute of Neuroradiology, University of Zurich

EDUCATION:
1996 PhD, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel
1992 MSc, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
1990 BSc, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

AWARDS:
2008 ScienceSuisse Award for Research Excellence
2006 Young Investigator Award of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society
2005 Young Investigator Award of the Swiss Society of Biological Psychiatry
2000 NIH Fellows Award for Research Excellence in Neuroscience
1998 NIH Fellows Award for Research Excellence in Neuroscience
1997 James S McDonnell Foundation Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience

RESEARCH INTERESTS:
I have been using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to characterize the brain structures involved in visual perception, imagery, and memory. Functional MRI is a technique that permits the localization of regions in the human brain that are activated during cognition, with fine spatial and temporal resolutions (millimeters and seconds, respectively). Due to its non-invasive nature, fMRI is particularly useful for studying the neural basis of higher cognitive phenomena, like visual imagery, which are not easily simulated in animal models. I have found that visual representations of faces and objects in ventral temporal cortex (the so-called 'memory storehouse') are widely distributed and ‘top-down’ modulated by a cortical network of parietal and frontal regions. The goal of my new project is to understand effective connectivity and experience-dependent changes within these cortical networks. Specifically, I use faces and paintings as stimuli and my subjects, healthy normal volunteers, perform various cognitive tasks in the MR scanner, e.g. they rate facial attractiveness or assess the aesthetic affect of art compositions.