Biosketch

Avital Adler is a postdoctoral fellow specializing in neuro-computation in the Molecular Neurobiology Program and the Department of Physiology and Neuroscience  at the Skirball Institute, NYU School of Medicine. Her research focuses on the role of inhibition in experience-dependent synaptic plasticity

Avital received her Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2013. Her dissertation, “Value Encoding in the Striatum in View of Serotonin Neurotransmission,” written under the supervision of Prof. Hagai Bergman, looked at the basic physiology of the basal ganglia (BG) nuclei. Her goal was to study value encoding and information processing along the main axis of the BG nuclei, specifically within the input stage of the BG, the striatum.

Avital’s work initiated a new era of research in her advisor’s group, She able to discriminate between two arousal states by video analysis of the open/close state of the monkey eyes. Using EEG, she verified a correspondence between the state of the eyes and the arousal level and found differential arousal modulations of activity between the basal ganglia and the cortex. Most importantly, she showed that the changes in the discharge rate and pattern of the basal ganglia precede the changes in the cortex.

Avital’s work has been published in a variety of scientific journals, including Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience and The Journal of Neuroscience. She has also been a co-author to several book chapters  in books such as  “The Basal Ganglia” and “High frequency stimulation of the globus pallidus external segment biases behavior toward reward.”