Assaf Harel

Assaf Harel is an Associate Professor in the School of Professional Psychology at Wright State University, where he investigates the neural basis of visual recognition in real-world contexts through a neuroergonomic approach.

Education:

• PhD in cognitive neuropsychology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel)
• Post-doctoral research fellowship at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH)

His research centers on visual expertise, object and scene recognition, augmented cognition, categorization, perceptual learning, and top-down control mechanisms. Dr. Harel employs interdisciplinary methods to bridge theoretical neuroscience with real-world applications, examining how brain activity generates high-level visual cognition during everyday tasks.

Analysis of his 2012-2018 publications reveals consistent focus on the temporal dynamics of scene processing using EEG, the impact of task context on object recognition, and neural mechanisms of visual expertise. His work frequently integrates fMRI, EEG, psychophysics, and eye tracking to explore how top-down cognitive factors modulate visual processing across cortical regions.

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Dr. Harel directs the Human Neuroscience and Visual Cognition Lab, which utilizes multimodal cognitive neuroscience techniques to study perception-cognition interactions in ecologically valid settings, with applications in aviation ergonomics and human performance optimization.