Prof. Nira Mashal, full Prof. in the Faculty of Education. She received her PhD in Brain science from Bar-Ilan University in 2006, Dean of students (2020-23), former vice head of the Faculty of Education at BIU. Currently heads the Brain and Language lab  Prof. Mashal obtained her PhD at the Brain Research Center at Bar-Ilan and her MSc at the Technion, Haifa.

Prof. Mashal developed evidenced-based cognitive intervention to enhance pragmatics, language and cognitive abilities in neurotypicals as well as clinical populations such as ASD, Dyslexia and Schizophrenia. She published  70 journal articles as well as national and international presentations on the field of brain and language, brain stimulation, brain lateralization, creativity, and cognitive interventions. Her methods include psycholinguistics experiments, brain stimulation techniques (tDCS), fMRI, QEEGand ERP.

Prof. Mashal established the first Neuroeducation progrm in Israel that qualify students to apply brain research techniques in typical and atypical populations to increase cognitive and language functioning ( The graduate studies for Neuroeducation), and member of the Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center at Bar-Ilan University.

Prof. Mashal is a guest associate editor at Frontiers in Pychology.

Her areas of interest in research include:

• The neural bases of non-literal language comprehension; Semantic processing at the word, sentence and text level;
• Using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to enhance language and cognitive performances in aphasia and schizophrenia;
• The neural correlates of figurative language processing in schizophrenia;
• Developing cognitive intervention programs to enhance figurative language comprehension in special populations including individuals with autism, schizophrenia, and intellectual disability;
• Language processing and brain asymmetry in the aging brain;
• Cognition and emotion: brain processing of positive and negative linguistic stimuli.