Research Focus

Translational research centers on sensory, emotional, attentional, and social dysregulations in health and disease. In the Behavioral Neurobiology Lab, we investigate how developmental environmental hardship produces lasting behavioral, biochemical, and neural consequences that contribute to disorders such as PTSD, ADD/ADHD, and other neuro-dysregulation conditions.

Using basic and applied animal models, such as rodents and working dogs, and parallel human studies, we explore mechanisms underlying emotional regulation, attention functions, and social cooperation. These models allow examination of developmental conditions, stress exposure, and enriched/impoverished environments, and how they shape resiliency, vulnerability, attention profiles, and social behavior.

To understand attentional and emotional dysregulations, we integrate behavioral, pharmacological, genetic, biochemical, and neural-plasticity paradigms, situated within a broader human/animal–technology interface. For example, this translational effort led to the development of a patented physiological tool for non-invasive measurement of emotional and attention dysregulations, funded by the Israeli Innovation Authority and implemented through my start-up company (Mindtension Ltd). The tool has been applied to studies of daily functioning, such as collaborations with the Israeli Air Force examining sleep-deprivation effects, where machine learning predicted professional roles from physiological biomarkers[AA1] . On the pathological end, we identified a novel duo treatment for PTSD based on attentional-dysregulation mechanisms, demonstrating beneficial effects of Methylphenidate in a PTSD animal model.