Project Supervisors

Anat Barnea

Anat Barnea is a Professor of Behavioural Neurobiology at the The Open University of Israel. She obtained her BSc in Life Sciences at the Hebrew university, and her MSc (the biology of the Syrian woodpecker) and PhD (interactions between fleshy fruits and birds which disperse them) at Tel-Aviv University, Israel. She then continued for postdoctoral studies in Oxford (UK) and The Rockefeller University (USA), where she became interested in neuroethology. Her research focuses on the effect of various environmental conditions (e.g. social change, migration, artificial light at night) on brain plasticity (i.e. recruitment and survival of new neurons) in adult birds, to try to understand how these phenomena relate to the life of animals. Hopefully, these studies will enable a better understanding of neuronal replacement and will lead to medical applications. Anat is also interested in urban ecology and studies how urbanisation affects the behaviour and physiology of birds.

Anat is the scientist in charge of Project 13: Effects of housing conditions and of individual differences in space use on hippocampal neuroplasticity.