About Me - Prof. Aviva Berkovich-Ohana 

•  I am an Associate Professor, affiliated at the University of Haifa, Edmond J. Safra Brain Research Center, and Departments of Counseling and Human Development, My training included a PhD in Neurobiology at the Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar-Ilan University, Israel, and post-doctorate at the Weizmann Institute, Israel, as well as Sapienza University, Rome, Italy.

• Major research interests of my lab include the effects of contemplative mental training on consciousness, cognition and self-reference. Specifically, I am interested in the neural and cognitive processes underlying the sense of self, as well as its phenomenology. we often collaborate with long-term practitioners from different contemplative traditions, including meditation, psychedelics, channelling and lucid dreaming. 

• On the theoretical level, I am interested in conceptualizations of consciousness, and have developed a framework, named the Consciousness State Space (CSS). The CSS framework is a neuro-phenomenological model for consciousness and selfhood which relates time, awareness, and emotion within one field, thus creates a comprehensive theoretical framework with explanatory and unificatory power.

• Member of IBBRC - The Integrated Brain And Behavior Research Center; and a  Member of The Center for the Study of Human Spirit; and member of The Haifa Brain and Behavior Hub.

• My research is and has been supported by TEVA's National Network of Excellence, the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi), the Bial Foundation, the Mind and Life Institute, the Israeli Scientific Foundation, and Tiny Blue Dot (TBD) Foundation's "perception box" funding project.