Dr. Koral Goltseker

Dr. Koral Goltseker is a neuroscientist with a PhD in Psychobiology from Tel Aviv University. In her doctoral research, she explored the behavioral and molecular mechanisms of drug memory reconsolidation. Her findings open novel avenues for the development of non-pharmacological therapeutic approaches for the prevention of drug use relapse in addicts. During her PhD, Dr. Goltseker received an award from the Society for Neuroscience, and a full scholarship for the prestigious Neurobiology course at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, MA.

At the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University, Dr. Goltseker explores how internal states and prior experience, such as hunger, thirst, emotion, or expectation, modify the attractivity of different tastes and affect consummatory behaviors. Additionally, she will ask how a mammalian organism develops preferences for the particular nutrients sugar and fat even without tasting them. To address these questions, Dr. Goltseker will perform both gain-of-function and loss-of-function studies, using state-of-the-art optogenetic, genetic and imaging tools to manipulate neuronal activity at the periphery, in the gut, and in the brain. Dr. Goltseker believes that the findings of her postdoctoral research will help to answer a simple question “Why do we enjoy certain tastes?”.

Before entering academia, Dr. Goltseker was a news reporter and host on Israel’s Russian-language TV for over 10 years.