Ziv Ben-Zion

Ziv Ben-Zion
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Ziv verified their affiliation via an institutional email.
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Ziv verified their affiliation via an institutional email.
Yale University | YU · Section of Comparative Medicine

Phd

About

95
Publications
6,902
Reads
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643
Citations
Introduction
Neuroscience Postdoc at Yale University 🧠
Additional affiliations
July 2021 - November 2023
ScienceAbroad: The Organization of Israeli Scientists Abroad
Position
  • Yale Regional Manager
Description
  • Organizing scientific talks and discussions; Developing collaborations with local organizations; Planning and organizing social and networking events;
September 2021 - present
Yale University
Position
  • Racial Justice Committee Member
Description
  • https://ypa.yale.edu/what-ypa/racial-justice-subcommittee
September 2021 - present
Yale University
Position
  • Symposium Committee Member
Description
  • https://ypa.yale.edu/what-ypa/symposium-committee
Education
October 2015 - September 2020
Tel Aviv University
Field of study
  • Interdisciplinary Direct Ph.D. in Neuroscience, Supervisor: Prof. Talma Hendler
October 2012 - August 2015
Tel Aviv University
Field of study
  • Double Major in Biology and in Psychology with an emphasis on Neuroscience

Publications

Publications (95)
Article
Full-text available
Objective: The weak link between subjective symptom-based diagnostic methods for posttraumatic psychopathology and objectively measured neurobiological indices forms a barrier to the development of effective personalized treatments. To overcome this problem, recent studies have aimed to stratify psychiatric disorders by identifying consistent subg...
Article
Full-text available
The hippocampus and the amygdala play a central role in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) pathogenesis. While alternations in volumes of both regions have been consistently observed in individuals with PTSD, it remains unknown whether these reflect pre-trauma vulnerability traits or acquired post-trauma consequences of the disorder. Here, we co...
Article
Full-text available
Subjective value is a core concept in neuroeconomics, serving as the basis for decision making. Despite the extensive literature on the neural encoding of subjective reward value in humans, the neural representation of punishment value remains relatively understudied. This review synthesizes current knowledge on the neural representation of reward...
Article
Full-text available
Neuroscience education is challenged by rapidly evolving technology and the development of interdisciplinary approaches for brain research. The Human Brain Project (HBP) Education Programme aimed to address the need for interdisciplinary expertise in brain research by equipping a new generation of researchers with skills across neuroscience, medici...
Article
Full-text available
Objective: Although treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is effective in reducing symptom severity, remission rates are low. One potential underlying reason for treatment ineffectiveness is differential response of specific PTSD symptom clusters. Using data from a national Veterans Affairs (VA) residential PTSD treatment cohort, we con...
Preprint
Full-text available
The increasing use of Large Language Models (LLMs) in mental health research and care underscores the need to understand their responses to emotional content. Previous research has shown that emotion-inducing prompts can increase the “anxiety” levels reported by LLMs, influencing their subsequent behavior and exacerbating inherent biases. This work...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Background: The weak link between subjective symptom-based diagnostics of posttraumatic psychopathology and objectively measured neurobiological indices forms a barrier to effective treatment development. To bridge this gap, we sought reproducible associations between early resting-state brain activity and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) sympt...
Article
Full-text available
Almost three decades have passed since the first posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) neuroimaging study was published. Since then, the field of clinical neuroscience has made advancements in understanding the neural correlates of PTSD to create more efficacious treatment strategies. While gold-standard psychotherapy options are available, many pat...
Article
Full-text available
Importance Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is marked by the contrasting symptoms of hyperemotional reactivity and emotional numbing (ie, reduced emotional reactivity). Comprehending the mechanism that governs the transition between neutral and negative emotional states is crucial for developing targeted therapeutic strategies. Objectives To e...
Preprint
Full-text available
Stress engages multiple neurobiological modifications and a failure to regulate these may lead to chronic psychiatric problems. Despite considerable research, it remains unclear how neural alterations of acute stress reflect the ability to cope with chronic stress. The current longitudinal study examined the whole-brain network dynamics following i...
Article
Full-text available
Rationale A subanesthetic dose of ketamine, a non-competitive N-methyl-D-aspartate glutamate receptor (NMDAR) antagonist, elicits dissociation in individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), who also often suffer from chronic dissociative symptoms in daily life. These debilitating symptoms have not only been linked to worse PTSD trajector...
Preprint
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is known as a disorder with volatile mood swings and overexpression of emotions. However, PTSD is also associated with symptoms of emotional numbing, which involve reduced emotional reactivity. To address these contrasting symptoms, we employed a computational approach to investigate whether individuals with PT...
Article
Full-text available
Increases of symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety and depression have been observed among individuals exposed to potentially traumatic events in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Similarly, associations among different aspects of mental health, such as symptoms of PTSD and suicidal ideation, have also been documented....
Article
Avoidant coping strategies, which involve cognitions and behaviors aimed to avoid dealing with stressful experiences, are associated with adverse long-term mental and physical health outcomes. In response to traumatic events, these strategies can be maladaptive as they may interfere with the adaptive integration of traumatic events into consolidate...
Article
Background: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has been associated with altered emotion processing and modulation in specific brain regions, i.e. amygdala, insula, medial prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortices. Functional alterations in these regions, recorded shortly after trauma exposure, may predict changes in PTSD symptoms. Methods: Su...
Article
Full-text available
Numerous studies have explored the relationship between posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the hippocampus and the amygdala because both regions are implicated in the disorder’s pathogenesis and pathophysiology. Nevertheless, those key limbic regions consist of functionally and cytoarchitecturally distinct substructures that may play differen...
Article
Aim: To assess the efficacy of a novel neurofeedback (NF) method, targeting limbic activity, to treat emotional dysregulation related to premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). Method: We applied a NF probe targeting limbic activity using an fMRI-inspired EEG model (termed Amyg-EFP-NF) in a double-blind randomized controlled trial. A frontal alp...
Preprint
Full-text available
Background: Transcription of audio files in mental health research has historically been labor-intensive and prone to error. The advent of advanced language models, such as Whisper AI, presents an opportunity to optimize the transcription process while addressing privacy and Institutional Review Board (IRB) concerns.Methods: We provide a comprehens...
Preprint
Rationale. A subanesthetic dose of ketamine, a non-competitive N-methyl-D-aspartate glutamate receptor (NMDAR) antagonist, elicits dissociation in individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), who also often suffer from chronic dissociative symptoms in daily life. These debilitating symptoms have not only been linked to worse PTSD traject...
Preprint
Numerous studies have explored the relationship between posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the hippocampus and amygdala, as both regions are implicated in the disorder’s pathogenesis and pathophysiology. Nevertheless, these key limbic regions consist of functionally and cytoarchitecturally distinct substructures that may play a different role...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Guilt and Shame, two core self-related emotions, often emerge following trauma and play an important role in the development and maintenance of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Importantly, Guilt and Shame exhibit specific focal and non-specific global impacts of trauma on self-perception, respectively. Objective and Methods: Inte...
Article
Full-text available
Background: The most used questionnaires for PTSD screening in adults were developed in English. Although many of these questionnaires were translated into other languages, the procedures used to translate them and to evaluate their reliability and validity have not been consistently documented. This comprehensive scoping review aimed to compile th...
Presentation
Lecture as part of a nano-symposium titled "Emotional State Influences on Brain Function
Presentation
Lecture as part of a symposium titled "Digital approaches to predicting posttraumatic stress and resilience: promises, challenges and future directions"
Article
Full-text available
Delirium screening in acute care settings is a resource intensive process with frequent deviations from screening protocols. A predictive model relying only on daily collected nursing data for delirium screening could expand the populations covered by such screening programs. Here, we present the results of the development and validation of a serie...
Article
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with altered pain perception, namely increased pain threshold and higher pain response. While pain consists of physiological and affective components, affective components are often overlooked. Similar patterns of increased threshold-high response in PTSD were shown in response to emotional stimuli...
Preprint
Full-text available
The hippocampus and the amygdala play a central role in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) pathogenesis. While alternations in volumes of both regions have been consistently observed in individuals with PTSD, it remains unknown whether these reflect pre-trauma vulnerability traits or acquired post-trauma consequences of the disorder. Here, we co...
Presentation
Introduction: Reduced hippocampal and amygdala volumes have been documented in Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and conceived as either pre-traumatic vulnerability trait or post-exposure stress-induced atrophy. To inform these hypotheses, this work longitudinally evaluates the association between volumetric changes in the hippocampus and the a...
Article
Full-text available
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a protracted and debilitating consequence of traumatic events. Identifying early predictors of PTSD can inform the disorder’s risk stratification and prevention. We used advanced computational models to evaluate the contribution of early neurocognitive performance measures to the accuracy of predicting chron...
Article
Full-text available
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a severe psychiatric disorder with profound public health impact due to its high prevalence, chronic nature, accompanying functional impairment, and frequently occurring comorbidities. Early PTSD symptoms, often observed shortly after trauma exposure, abate with time in the majority of those who initially ex...
Article
Full-text available
Background Sexual assault survivors are a vulnerable sub-population that might be severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, yet received little research attention during this global crisis. Higher levels of resilience are generally associated with lower symptoms of depression and anxiety and are thus considered as promoting adjustment to stress....
Article
Background: Processing negative and positive valenced stimuli involve multiple brain regions including the amygdala and ventral striatum (VS). Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is often associated with hyper-responsivity to negatively valenced, yet recent evidence also points to deficient positive valence functioning. It is yet unclear what is...
Preprint
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a severe psychiatric disorder with profound public health impact due to its high prevalence, chronic nature, accompanying functional impairment, and frequently occurring comorbidities. Early PTSD symptoms, often observed shortly after trauma exposure, subside in most of individuals initially expressing them...
Article
Full-text available
Early intervention following exposure to a traumatic life event could change the clinical path from the development of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to recovery, hence the interest in early detection and underlying biological mechanisms involved in the development of post traumatic sequelae. We introduce a novel end-to-end neural network th...
Presentation
As part of the symposium "Stress Recovery as a Resilience Factor in Psychopathology".
Presentation
Volunteer Lecturer
Preprint
Negative and positive valence systems (NVS and PVS) pertain to processing of aversive and rewarding stimuli, respectively. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has been typically associated with hyper-responsivity of the NVS, and more recently, with deficient PVS functionality. The respective roles of these systems in early PTSD development have y...
Presentation
Symposium Lecture - Novel Approaches to Studying the Response to Stress
Presentation
https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/en/education/HBPTeaAndSlides/
Thesis
Neurobiological processes that take place during the year that follows a traumatic event critically determine who will develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and who will not. Among survivors of single traumatic incidents, the chronic disorder frequently follows a failure to recover from early PTSD symptoms. Longitudinal studies further desc...
Article
Full-text available
Importance: Uncovering objective correlates of PTSD severity may improve early case detection and treatment decisions. Objective: To test the ability of an innovative analytic approach to select a set of multimodal biomarkers that efficiently differentiates PTSD subtypes shortly after traumatic event. Design: Observational cohort study of general...
Presentation
https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/en/education/participatecollaborate/student-conference/4th-student-conference/
Poster
https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/en/education/participatecollaborate/student-conference/4th-student-conference/
Preprint
Full-text available
Contemporary symptom-based diagnosis of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) largely overlooks related neurobehavioral findings and rely entirely on subjective interpersonal reporting. Previous studies associating objective biomarkers with PTSD have mostly used the disorder's symptom-based diagnosis as main outcome measure, overlooking the actual...
Presentation
https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/en/education/participatecollaborate/curriculum/workshops/3rd-hbp-curriculum-workshop-series-cognitive-systems/
Poster
https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/en/education/participatecollaborate/curriculum/workshops/3rd-hbp-curriculum-workshop-series-cognitive-systems/
Article
Full-text available
Background: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is triggered by distinct events and is therefore amenable to studies of its early pathogenesis. Longitudinal studies during the year that follows trauma exposure revealed typical symptom trajectories leading to either recovery or protracted PTSD. The neurobehavioral correlates of early PTSD symptoms...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Low hippocampal volume could serve as an early risk factor for Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in interaction with other brain anomalies of developmental origin. One such anomaly may well be a presence of large Cavum Septum Pellucidum (CSP), which has been loosely associated with PTSD. Here, we performed a longitudinal prospective...
Poster
https://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/7883/presentation/48625
Article
Full-text available
Introduction: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a prevalent, severe and tenacious psychopathological consequence of traumatic events. Neurobehavioral mechanisms underlying PTSD pathogenesis have been identified, and may serve as risk-resilience factors during the early aftermath of trauma exposure. Longitudinally documenting the neurobehavio...
Article
Angry outbursts during interpersonal provocations may lead to violence and prevails in numerous pathological conditions. In the anger-infused Ultimatum Game (aiUG), unfair monetary offers accompanied by written provocations induce anger. Rejection of such offers relates to aggression, whereas acceptance to anger regulation. We previously demonstrat...
Article
Background: Identification of reliable targets for therapeutic interventions is essential for developing evidence-based therapies. Attention biases toward negative-valenced information and lack of protective positive bias toward positive-valenced stimuli have been implicated in depression. However, extant research has typically used tasks with nar...
Article
Full-text available
The Ultimatum Game (UG) is a canonical social decision-making task whereby a proposer divides a sum of money between himself and a responder who accepts or rejects the offer. Studies consistently demonstrate that unfair offers induce anger, and that rejecting such offers relates to aggression. Nevertheless, the UG is limited in interpersonal provoc...
Conference Paper
Anger is experienced mostly during social interactions and may lead to aggression. In a standard Ultimatum Game (UG), two players split a sum of money between them. Unfair offers induce anger; rejecting unfair offers is associated with aggression, whereas accepting them relates to anger regulation. Therefore, the UG may serve as a paradigm to induc...

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