Prof. Boaz M. Ben-David, PhD
Head, Communication Aging and Neuropsychology lab
Prof. Ben-David is a cognitive psychologist and a speech scientist. He heads the Communication Aging and Neuropsychology lab (CANlab) at Reichman University.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in both physics and psychology, a Masters (Summa cum Laude) and a PhD in Cognitive Psychology, all from Tel-Aviv University. Prof. Ben-David began his postdoctoral training at the University of Toronto examining
several aspects of sensory and cognitive aging: The effects of aging and background noise on spoken word recognition, the time-line for perceptually segregating speech from ambient noise, and mechanisms underlying selective attention. In 2012, Prof. Ben-David took a faculty position at Reichman University.
Prof. Ben-David also holds academic positions as an adjunct scientist at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute (TRI, a research hospital) and as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Toronto, in the Department of Speech-Language Pathology and the Rehabilitation Sciences Institute (RSI).
His current focus is on communication, neuropsychological testing and cognitive and sensory integration in aging.
He investigates the premise that reductions in the quality of the sensory input will result in less efficient cognitive functioning, specifically when communicating in adverse situations (such as a noisy restaurant).
Prof. Ben-David also investigates the different routes for the perception of emotions in spoken language.
In his lab, he uses various sophisticated methods including eye-tracking, auditory analysis, mathematical modeling and attentional paradigms.
Prof. Ben-David has won several grants and awards. Notably, the Marie Curie Career Integration award (EU), Harvey A. Friedman Center for Aging - Global Aging Initiative (Washington University), Bronfman Philanthropies (Brandeis University), a collaborative grant from the Alzheimer’s Society of Canada, grant manager on a multi-national €972,521 grant on active and healthy aging, from the European Commission and a recent grant from the German-Israeli Foundation (GIF).