Shahar Arzy

Shahar Arzy is the Director of the Computational Neuropsychiatry Lab (CNP Lab) and the lead neurologist of the Neuropsychiatry Clinic at Hadassah Medical Center. He received his medical degree and master’s in cognitive science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Prof Mordechai Rotenberg) and PhD from the Swiss Institute of Technology and the University of Geneva under Prof. Olaf Blanke. Following, he specialized in Neurology at Hadassah Medical Center (Prof. Tamir Ben-Hur) and in Cognitive Neurology in Geneva University Hospital (Prof. Theodor Landis). Shahar also trained in memory research at Harvard University under the mentorship of Prof. Dan Schacter. Shahar profits much from close collaborations and continuous discussions with exceptional researchers and friends worldwide.

Shahar’s main interest is the human self and its relations to the surrounding world – the space in which we live, the river of time who carries our memories and future plans and imagination, and people around us, as well as more conceptual frameworks. To this aim he apply tools from cognitive neuroscience, functional neuroimaging, virtual-reality and computational neuroscience. Moreover, as an active clinician he is interested in the way in which these relations are disturbed in neuropsychiatry, and especially in Alzheimer’s disease. He has learned much from insightful thoughts of notable authors in the domains of psychology and psychoanalysis, cognitive neuropsychiatry, mathematics and philosophy. In the lab he endeavors to establish a learning environment of “Beit-Midrash” (House of Learning) in which a group of dedicated researchers and clinicians are devoted to better understand the human self and its subjective experience in physiological and pathological states, and to develop new tools to help patients with neuropsychiatric disorders.