Ophir Netzer and Dr. Lisa Simon took the stage at ISCoP 2026, the annual Israeli Conference on Cognition Research, held this year in Akko.
PhD student Ophir Netzer opened with a talk exploring the subjective experience of acute stress during psychoactive states among Nova festival survivors. Building on her earlier findings, which showed that early posttraumatic responses varied significantly by substance, Ophir’s talk shifted the lens from posttraumatic symptom outcomes to the phenomenology of the acute exposure itself: how psychoactive effects and extreme stress interacted in the moment for survivors who were under the influence during the attack.
Postdoctoral researcher Lisa Simon then presented findings from her longitudinal follow-up of approximately 400 Nova survivors, tracking PTSD symptom trajectories across the first year post-trauma in the context of ongoing war. The findings challenge traditional recovery models and raise important questions about trauma chronification under conditions of prolonged threat.
It was a great opportunity to share the lab’s work with the broader Israeli cognitive science community, and we look forward to continuing these conversations.