Prof. Avital is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Heath Sciences at the University of Haifa.
He published more than 60 papers (H-index: 28; Citation index: 3028) in leading journals.
In his Ph.D (University of Haifa) research he discovered the effects of exposure to juvenile stress on emotional and cognitive coping abilities in adulthood. He then moved to the Weizmann Institute of Science and continued his research on stress and found the unique role of mineralo- and Gluco-corticoid system in the mechanism of neural plasticity following stress. Starting his interest in translational neuroscience, he also studied and found blood markers for the severity of Schizophrenia symptoms. After joining the Technion (until 2021), he has established the Behavioral Neuroscience lab. Since then, he has been investigating the regulation and dysregulation of attention and social cooperation processes in health and disease, combining state-of-the-art behavioral technologies with molecular and physiological tools. During these studies he has developed a fully computerized social cooperation maze, currently enabling to decipher the genetics of social cooperation and also subserving a groundbreaking collaborative research on the dysregulation of sociability in Autism. These finding and many others were translated and implemented in working dogs, for security purposes.
His ongoing translational research on attention dysregulation has led to a newly EMG-based instrument (patent reg. #63524) and the establishment of a startup company (Mindtension, ltd) that further the R&D and implementing this technology to better diagnose and treat ADHD, ‘circumstantial’ ADHD (e.g. medical residents following workload), and the involvement of the attention system in stress (i.e. PTSD). Avital’s research along the years has been extensively funded by the Israeli ministry of defense, US army/NIH and the ISF.
Avraham (Avi) Raphael Avital, Ph.D
Behavioral Neurobiology lab.
Department of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of social welfare and health sciences.
University of Haifa,
Haifa 3498838, Israel.
Lab: +972-77-8871394
Office: +972-77-8872225; +972-4-6495395
Cell: +972-50-6503361
Website: https://Sites.google.com/welfare.haifa.ac.il/bnl
