Ziv Ben-Zion

I am a Fulbright postdoctoral fellow at Yale University, focusing on Affective & Clinical Neuroscience. Inspired by personal motivation, my overarching research goal is to better understand the neural mechanisms of Stress, Anxiety, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), to advance better personalized treatments for individuals suffering from these debilitating conditions.

My current research at Yale School of Medicine combines two different fields, investigated in two different labs: (1) Levy Decision Neuroscience Lab focusing on the neural mechanisms of decision-making under uncertainty, and (2) Harpaz-Rotem PTSD Research & Treatment Lab investigating the neurobiological & psychological factors related to the trauma exposure to advance treatments. My scientific work aims to understand the neural computations underlying different processes (e.g., decision-making, learning, memory) in different domains (e.g., rewards, punishments), and their association to anxiety- and stress-related disorders.

Over the last decade, I obtained my educational and research experience in the Sagol School of Neuroscience at Tel-Aviv University, where I completed both my B.Sc. (Biology, Psychology & Neuroscience) and Direct Ph.D. in Neuroscience. As part of my doctoral studies at the Sagol Brain Institute (Prof. Talma Hendler), I led a large-scale longitudinal fMRI study of recent trauma survivors during the first critical year following trauma exposure (2015-2020, NIH-founded). By linking observed clinical symptoms with cognitive functioning and neural alternations, finding from this work contributed to our understating of the nature of traumatic stress responses and its aftermath, informing both the pathogenesis of PTSD and the science of resilience and recovery from trauma. Results of this work were published in leading journal in the fields of Neuroscience and Psychiatry (e.g., Molecular Psychiatry, Biological Psychiatry).

My experience in research methodologies include structural and functional MRI, EEG, Neurofeedback and Brain Stimulation methods (tDCS). I’m knowledgeable in analysis of neuroimaging data using SPM, FSL, Matlab, R & SPSS. I have over 7 years of teaching experience, serving as a teaching assistant at Tel-Aviv University and as a private tutor for student groups and individuals. I volunteer in both professional organizations (e.g., Yale Postdoctoral Association, The Human Brain Project, Reviewer in Scientific Journals) and social initiatives (e.g., Birthright Project, Buddies Program, International Week).