Empathy Building Neuro-lab

April 2024: Congrats Annika for the "NBE Excellent Student Paper Award" on the now online paper (https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhae125)!!

March 2024: Surprising findings on what happens in our brains when we perceive ideological right & left, and how this relates to Political polarization .check it out here!

February 2024: Congrats to Annika Kluge & Niloufar Zebarjadi for obtaining two travel grants (thanks to Aalto Brain & Mind doctoral education network) to cover travel costs to upcoming conferences!   

1. Kluge A, Somila N, Lankinen K, Levy J(In Press) Neural Alignment during Outgroup Intervention Predicts Future Change of Affect towards Outgroup. Cerebral Cortex. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhae125
2. Kluge A, Adler E, Nir L, Halperin E, Sams M, Levy J(2024) Asymmetry in political polarization at multiple levels of bias. Political Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12967
3. Zebarjadi N, Levy J (2023) Neural shifts in alpha rhythm's dual functioning during empathy maturation. Brain and Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1002/brb3.3110.
4. Zebarjadi N, Adler E, Kluge A, Sams M, Levy J (2023) Ideological values are parametrically associated with empathy neural response to vicarious suffering. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsad029
5. Hautala A, Kluge A, Hameiri B, Zebarjadi N, Levy J (2023) Examining implicit neural bias against vaccine hesitancy. Social Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470919.2022.2162119
6. Levy J, Goldstein A, Influs M, Masalha S, Feldman R (2022) Dialogue Intervention for Youth amidst Intractable Conflict Attenuates Neural Prejudice Response and Promotes Adults' Peacemaking. PNAS Nexus, https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgac236
7. Turk E, Endevelt-Shapira Y, Feldman R, van den Heuvel MI* & Levy J* (2022) Brains in sync: Practical guideline for parent-infant EEG during natural interaction. Frontiers in Psychology 13:833112. (* shared last authorship). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.833112 
8. Turk E, Vroomen J, Fonken Y, Levy J*& van den Heuvel MI* (2022) In sync with your child: The potential of parent-child EEG in developmental research. Developmental Psychobiology 64(3) e22221. (* shared last authorship) http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/dev.22221
9. Van Bavel, J.J., Cichocka, A., Capraro, V. et al. (2022) National identity predicts public health support during a global pandemic. Nature Communications 13: 517. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-27668-9
10. Adler, Hebel-Sela, Adomi Leshem, Levy* & Halperin* (2022) A social virus: Intergroup dehumanization and unwillingness to aid amidst COVID-19 - Who are the main targets? International Journal of Intercultural Relations. (* shared last authorship) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2021.11.006
11. Zebarjadi N & Levy J (2021) Neural shifts in alpha rhythm's dual functioning during empathy. Brain and Behavior. Registered-report (Stage 1 acceptance).
12. Zebarjadi N, Adler E, Kluge A, Jääskeläinen IP, Sams M, Levy J (2021) Rhythmic neural patterns during empathy to vicarious pain: Beyond the Affective-Cognitive Empathy dichotomy. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 15:708107. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2021.708107
13. Levy J, Bader O (2020). Graded Empathy: A Neuro-Phenomenological Hypothesis. Frontiers in Psychiatry - Social Cognition. 11:554848. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2020.554848

Statement & Bio

What drives my work in science is the passion to investigate phenomena from multiple perspectives, and merging them into novel representations. I foremost love using MEG in cojunction with various humanistic and technological approaches. 

My first passion is rooted in the relations between our brain and our subjective-experience (during my PhD) and our social behaviour (during my postdoc). My second passion in life has been the relations between social groups: growing up as European and Israeli, receiving my academic education in three different continents, obtaining my PhD in a Dutch-French co-tutelle, and now directing a Finnish-Israeli lab. Thus, leading multilevel investigations on multiple social groups excites my scientific intellect.

Full publication list (via Google Scholar)