Maya Pery is a Ph.D. student in Psychology at the University of Haifa. Her research focuses on the neural and cognitive mechanisms that shape the perception of the self. She holds an M.Sc. from the Faculty of Data and Decision Sciences at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, where she specialized in Cognitive Psychology. Before transitioning to academia, Maya spent nearly a decade working as a User Experience Designer in the professional sector, following a B.F.A. in Design from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Israel. Her design work centered on how people perceive and interact with complex information- an interest that evolved into her current scientific exploration of how the mind constructs reality. Her main interest lies in how we experience ourselves as conscious beings-what creates the feeling of being “me”, what mechanisms shape the subjective boundaries perceived between the self and the external world, and what happens when those boundaries begin to blur.